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Eiue^jr Walker && 



A HISTORY OF ENGLAND 



Books by 


RuDYARD Kipling 


Actions and Reactions 




Light That Failed, The 


Brushwood Bot, The 




Many Inventions 


Captains Coubageous 
Collected Verse 
Day's Work, The 




Naulahka.The (WithWolcott 
Balestier) 

Plain Tales from the Hills 
Puck of Pook's Hill 


Departmental Ditties 
AND Ballads and Barrack- 
Room Ballads 

Five Nations, The 
Jungle Book, The 
Jungle Book, Second 
Just So Song Book 


Rewards and Fairies 

Sea to Sea, From 

Seven Seas, The 

Soldier Stories 

Soldiers Three, The Story 

OF the Gadsbys, and In 

Black and White 


Just So Stories 




Stalky & Co. 


Kim 




They 


Kipling Stories and Poems 
Evert Child Should Know 


Traffics and Discoveries 
Under the Deodars, The 


Kipling Birthday Book, The 


Phantom 'Rickshaw, and 


Life's Handicap; 


Being 


Wee Willie Winkie 


Stories of Mine Own People 


With the Night Mail 



A History of England 



By 

C. R. L. Fletcher 

AND 

Rudyard Kipling 



Pictures by Henry Ford 




Garden City New York 

DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 

1911 

V 



M^i 



ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OP TRANSLATION 
INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN 



COPYRIGHT, 1911, BY RUDYARD KIPLING 



J 






V / 



v 



C;CI.A285680f^ 



PREFACE 

This book is written for all boys and girls who are 
interested in the story of Great Britain and her Empire. 

C. R. L. F. 

R.K. 
March, 1911. 



The publishers desire to express their thanks to the 
Manager and officials of the United Services Museum, 
Whitehall, for their courtesy in giving facilities to the 
artist for making studies of the mihtary and naval 
material in the museum. 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

I. From the Earliest Time to the De- 
parture OF the Romans . 3 

II. Saxon England ... .23 

III. The Norman Kings, 1066-1154 . . 50 

IV. Henry II to Henry III, 1154-1272: the 

Beginnings of Parliament . . 70 

V. The Three Edwards, 1272-1377 . . 95 

VI. The End of the Middle Ages; Richard 

II TO Richard III, 1377-1485 . 112 

VII. The Tudors and the Awakening of 

England, 1485-1603 . . .129 

VIII. The Early Stuarts and the Great 

Civil War, 1603-1660 . . .165 

IX. The Fall of the Stuarts and the Revo- 
lution, 1660-1688 . . .194 

X. William III to George II, 1688-1760; 

THE Growth of Empire . .212 

XI. The American Rebellion and the 
Great French War, 1760 -1815; 
Reign of George III . 239 

XII. George III to George V, 1815-1911 . 266 



POEMS 



The River's Tale . 
The Roman Centurion Speaks 
The Pirates in England . 
^The Saxon Foundations of England 
What "Dane-geld" means 
William the Conqueror's Work 
Norman and Saxon 
The Reeds of Runnymede 
My Father's Chair 
The Davm Wind . 
The King's Job 
With Drake in the Tropics 
"Together" .... 
Before Edgehill Fight . 
The Dutch in the Medway 
"Brown Bess" 
" 'Twas not while England's sword unsheathed 
After the War 
The French Wars . 
The Bells and the Queen, 1911 
Big Steamers 

The Secret of the Machines 
The Glory of the Garden 



PAGE 
3 

16 
23 
31 

40 
49 
56 

86 
94 
127 
129 
158 
163 
183 
201 
212 
239 
243 
264 
269 
287 
303 
306 



LIST OF COLOURED PLATES 



William I at Hastings 








Frontispiece 


FACING PAGE 


The Cave People 6 


The Landing of the Danes 










36 


Richard I in the Holy Land 










80 


Edward III at Calais 










108 


Richard II and Wat Tyler . . . 










114 


An Imaginary Map of America, 1500 










126 


With Drake in the Tropics 










158 


Prince Rupert at Oxford, going to battle 










184 


CromweU with his "Ironsides " 










186 


The Dutch in the Med way 










202 


King George at Dettingen 










228 


Quiberon Bay .... 










236 


Waterloo, 7 p. m., June 18, 1815 










264 


A Glimpse of the Future 










304 



LIST OF DRAWINGS 



how the King shared the 



The Landing of the Romans . 
■The Building of the Wall 
St. Augustine preaching to Ethelbert 
The Murder of Becket . 
King John signs the Great Charter 
Edward I's Wars with the Welsh — 

hardships of his men 
English Archery wins at Agincourt 
How Henry VIII had the Monks turned out of the Monasteries 
Henry VIII sees that England has a good Fleet 
At the time of the Armada — Elizabeth reviews the Troops at 

Tilbury 

Brown Bess 

Nelson shot at the Battle of Trafalgar, October 21, 1805 . 



14 

20 
34 
76 
84 

96 
118 
140 

142 

IGO 
212 
258 



LIST OF MAPS 

FACING PAGE 

Britain from the Coming of the Romans to the Norman Conquest 24 

France 106 

Great Britain, to illustrate history from the Norman Conquest to 

the present day ........ 166 

Ireland 178 

British Colonial Empire after the Treaty of Utrecht, 1713 . . 224 

Western Europe ....... At end 

The World, showing the British Empire . . . At end 



A HISTORY OF ENGLAND 



CHAPTER I 

FROM THE EARLIEST TIME TO 
THE DEPARTURE OF THE ROMANS 

The River's Tale 

Twenty bridges from Tower to Kew 
Wanted to know what the River knew. 
For they were young and the Thames 

was old. 
And this is the tale that the River told: 

I walk my beat before London Town, 

Five hours up and seven down. 

Up I go and I end my run 

At Tide-end-town, which is Teddington. 

Down I come with the mud in my hands 

And plaster it over the Maplin Sands. 

But I'd have you know that these waters 

of mine 
Were once a branch of the River Rhine, 
When hundreds of miles to the east I went 
And England was joined to the Continent. 



THE BRITISH ISLANDS 

I remember the bat-winged lizard-birds. 
The Age of Ice and the mammoth herds. 
And the giant tigers that stalked them 

down 
Through Regent's Park into Camden Town. 
And I remember like yesterday 
The earliest Cockney who came my way 
When he pushed through the forest that 

lined the Strand, 
With paint on his face and a club in his 

hand. 
He was death to feather and fin and fur. 
He trapped my beavers at Westminster, 
He netted my salmon, he hunted my 

deer. 
He killed my herons off Lambeth Pier; 
He fought his neighbour with axes and 

swords, 
Flint or bronze, at my upper fords. 

While down at Greenwich for slaves and 

tin 
The tall Phoenician ships stole in. 
And North Sea war-boats, painted and 

gay. 
Flashed like dragon-flies Erith way; 
And Norseman and Negro and Gaul 

and Greek. 
Prank with the Britons in Barking Creek, 



THE RIVER'S TALE 5 

And life was gay, and the world was new. 
And I was a mile across at Kew! 
But the Roman came with a heavy hand. 
And bridged and roaded and ruled the land. 
And the Roman left and the Danes blew 

in — 
And that's where your history books 

begin ! 

This is to be a short history of all the people The land 
who have lived in the British Islands. I have 
just counted up over a hundred of these islands 
on the map, some of them mere rocks, some as 
big as small counties; besides England with 
Scotland, and Ireland. But when first there 
were men in Britain it was not a group of isl- 
ands, but one stretch of land joining the great 
continent of Europe, which then reached out 
into the Atlantic Ocean more than fifty miles 
west of Ireland. The English Channel, the 
North Sea, and the Irish Sea were then land 
through which ran huge European rivers. 
The land was covered with forests and swamps 
and full of wild beasts, some of which have now 
vanished from the earth, while others, such 
as the tiger and the elephant, have gone to 
warmer climates. As for wolves, the land was 
alive with them. Indeed, the last wolf in 
Scotland was killed only 240 years ago; the 



6 THE BRITISH ISLANDS 

last in Ireland about 180 years ago. The 
beaver was one of the commonest animals of 
those early times, and perhaps helped to make 
our flat meadows by the dams he built across 
the streams. 

But we know almost nothing about the first 
men who lived here, except that they were 

Perhaps naked and very hairy; they slept in trees and 
years ago. Hvcd ou raw flcsh or fruit, or dug for roots with 

^^^men! crookcd brauches. After a long while, prob- 
ably thousands of years, the climate got 
gradually colder, and great sheets of ice covered 
all Northern Europe. Then these first men 
either died out or went away southward. 
Again thousands of years passed, and the west 
end of Europe got freed of ice and sank several 
hundred feet, and the sea flooded over the 
lower parts. So Britain became an island or 
a group of islands. 

Perhaps Thcu the sccoud race of men came, perhaps 
years ago. in somc kind of boats made of skins stretched 
^nin/over bent poles. About this race we do know 
something. They were jolly, cunning, dark 
little fellows with long black hair. At first 
they lived high up on the hills, so that they 
could see their enemies from a distance. They 
could cook food, they dug out caves to live in, 
they made arrows and axes of sharp stones, 
and so stood a very fair chance of fighting the 




THE CAVE PEOPLE 



THE CAVE MEN 7 

wild beasts. Their brains, though perhaps 
small compared to ours, were worth all the 
strength of all the beasts that ever howled at 
night. No doubt they had still something of 
the beast in them; they could run very swiftly; 
could chmb trees like monkeys; could smell 
their enemies and their prey far off. They 
grew up early and died young. Most of their 
children died in infancy. They clothed them- ^[if^^ 
selves in skins, and at first hved entirely by 
hunting and fishing. Their whole time was 
devoted to getting food for themselves and 
their famihes. But just think what a lot of 
things they had to make for themselves. How 
long it must have taken to poHsh a piece of 
flint until it was sharp enough to cut down a 
tree or to cut up a tough old wolf! How long 
to make a fish-hook or a needle of bone! How 
clever and hard-working these men must have 
been ! No doubt there were a few sneaks and 
lazy wretches then, as there are now% who tried 
to beg from other people instead of fighting for 
themselves and their wives. But I fancy such 
fellows had a worse time of it then than they 
have now. A man who wouldn't work very 
soon died. 

No doubt there were holidays, too, after a 
successful hunt; or long lazy summer days, 
when it was too hot to go out after deer or 



8 THE BRITISH ISLANDS 

bison, and when even the women laid aside 
their everlasting skin-stitching and told each 
other stories of their babies; and the babies 
toddled about after butterflies, larger and 
brighter than the peacocks and tortoise shells 
of to-day. I don't suppose that these men 
thought of Britain as their "country"; but 
they thought of their family or their tribe as 
something sacred, for which they would fight 
and die; and the spirit of the good land took 
hold of them, the smell of the good damp mother- 
earth, the hum of the wild bees, the rustle of 

Their heather and murmur of fern; they made rude 
songs about it, and carved pictures of their 
fights on the shoulder-blades of the beasts 
they had killed. As time went on they grew 
still more cunning, and began to tame the 
young of some of the beasts, such as puppies, 
lambs, calves and kids; and they found out 
the delights of a good drink of milk. And 

Corn so to the hunting trade they added the shep- 

growing. , . , 

herd's trade, which is a much more paying one. 
Then some wonderful fellow discovered how 
to sow seeds of wheat, or some other corn; 
and that these, when ripened, gathered and 
ground to powder, made a delicious food, which 
we call bread. When that was found out real 
civilization began; for a third trade was added, 
that of agriculture, the most paying of all. 



THE CAVE MEN 9 

So one by one the earth gave up her secrets Their 

triDGS 

to our forefathers, and, Hke Adam and Eve, 
they went forth to subdue and replenish this 
Isle of Britain. Each century that passed, 
they lived longer, were better fed, better 
housed, used better weapons, killed off more 
wild beasts. They quarrelled, of course, and 
even killed each other; family often fought 
with family, tribe with tribe, for they were 
always breaking the Tenth Commandment. 
But such quarrels were not perpetual; tribe 
might often join with tribe, and so begin to 
form one nation or people. How they were 
governed, what their laws and customs were, 
what their religious ideas were, we can only Their 
guess. Perhaps the eldest man of the tribe °^^' 
was a sort of king and declared what were the 
"customs" which the tribe must keep; said 
"this would make the gods angry" and that 
would not; settled the disputes about a sheep 
or piece of corn-land; led the tribe to fight in 
battle. Perhaps this king pretended to be 
descended from the gods, and his tribe got to 
believe it. 

Who were the gods? Sun, moon, stars. Their 
rivers, trees, lakes; the rain, the lightning, the ^° ^' 
clouds; perhaps certain animals; dead ances- 
tors, if they had been brave men, would come 
to be counted gods. But all round you were 



10 THE BRITISH ISLANDS 

gods and spirits of some sort whom you must 
appease by sacrifices, or by absurd customs. 
"Do not cut your hair by moonlight, or the 
goddess of the moon will be angry." "If 
you are the king, never cut your hair at all." 
"Luck" perhaps was the origin of many of 
such customs; some famous man had once 
cut his hair by moonlight, and next day he had 
been struck by lightning. Then there were 
priests, or "medicine-men" of some kind. 
These would generally support the king; but 
they would often bully him also, and try to 
make him enforce absurd customs. 
, .Their Aii(j so the agcs rolled along, and these 

buildings. ccc^ A s» 1 

"Cave men or Stone Age men began to 
thin the forests a little or took advantage of 
the clearings caused by forest fires. They 
began to come down from the hill-tops, on 
which their earliest homes had been made, 
into the valleys. They began to come out of 
their caves, and began to build themselves 
villages of little wooden huts; they began to 
make regular beaten track-ways along the 
slopes of the downs; they began, perhaps, to 
raise huge stone temples to their heathen gods. 
Was it they who built Stonehenge, whose ruins 
even now strike us with wonder and terror? 
Their Tribe began to exchange its goods with 
foreiyers. tribe; the flints of Sussex for the deer horns of 



THE CELTS 11 

Devon, for deer horns make excellent pickaxes. 
Foreign traders came too, to buy the skins of 
the wild animals, also perhaps to buy slaves. 
Our ancestors were quite willing to sell their 
fellow men, captives taken in war from other 
tribes. What these foreigners brought in 
return is not very clear; perhaps only toys and 
ornaments, such as we now sell to savages; 
perhaps casks of strong drink; perhaps a few 
metal tools and weapons. For in Southern 
Europe men had now begun to make tools and 
weapons of bronze; the day of stone axes was 
nearly over. So by degrees the Stone Age men 
of Britain learned that there were richer and 
more civilized men than themselves living 
beyond the seas, who had things which they 
lacked; and, as they coveted such things, they 
had to make or catch something to buy them 
with. Therefore they bred more big dogs, 
killed and skinned more deer, caught more 
slaves. So trade began in Britain, and its 
benefits came first to those dwellers of the 
southern and south-eastern coasts who were 
nearest to the ports of Europe. 

But the foreign traders also took home with Perhaps 
them the report that Britain looked a fertile ago. ^^^^ 
country, and was quite worth conquering. 
And so, perhaps about a thousand years before ^^^M^ 
Christ, a set of new tribes began to cross the Celts. 



12 THE BRITISH ISLANDS 

Channel, and to land in our islands, not as 
traders, but as fighters. Terrible big fellows 
they were, with fair hair, and much stronger 
than the Stone Age men. They were armed, 
too, with this new-fangled bronze, which made 
short work of our poor little bows and flint- 
tipped arrows and spears. Those of us who 
were not killed or made slaves at once fled to 
the forests, fled ever northward or westward, 
or hid in our caves again. But many of us 
were made slaves, especially the women, some 
of whom afterward married their conquerors. 
The Celts, for that was the name of the new 
people, seized all the best land, all the flocks 
and herds, and all the strong places on the hill- 
tops, and began to lead in Britain the life which 
they had been leading for several centuries 
in the country we now call France. From 
these Celts the Scottish, Irish, and Welsh 
people are mainly descended. 
Life of the They rodc on war-ponies, and, like the 
Assyrians in the Bible, they drove war-chariots; 
they knew, or were soon taught by foreign 
traders, how to dig in the earth for minerals, 
and they soon did a large trade in that valuable 
metal, tin, which is found in Cornwall, They 
were in every way more civilized than the Stone 
Age men; their gods were fiercer and stronger; 
their priests, called Druids, more powerful; 



THE ROMAN INVASION 13 

their tribes were much larger and better or- 
ganized for war. Their methods of hunting 
and fishing, of agriculture, of sheep and cow 
breeding, were much better; their trade with 
their brothers in France was far greater. Be- 
fore they, in their turn, were conquered, they 
had found out the use of iron for tools and 
weapons; flint had gone down before bronze; 
so now bronze, which is a soft metal and takes 
time to make, rapidly went down before the 
cheap and hard gray iron. He who has the 
best tools will win in the fight with Nature; he 
who has the best weapons will beat his fellow 
men in battle. 

Meanwhile, far away in the East, great Growth of 

. ' o empires 

empires had been growmg up and decaying in distant 
for six or seven thousand years. Each con- 
tributed something to civilization, Egypt, 
Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Greece; each in turn 
made a bid for conquering and civilizing the 
"known world." But the world that they 
knew stretched little beyond the warm and ^°^^' 
tideless Mediterranean Sea. After all these 
arose the mighty empire of Rome, the heiress 
and conqueror of all these civiHzations and 
empires. Rome brought to her task a genius 
for war and government which none of them 
had known. The Roman armies had passed 
in conquest into Spain, into France, and from 



14 THE BRITISH ISLANDS 

Caesar's Francc they passed to Britain. The greatest 
of BrUaTn! ^^ Romaii soldicrs, Caius JuHus Caesar, who 
55, 54 B.C. ^ag conquering the Celts in France, landed 
somewhere in Kent, about fifty years before 
Christ's birth. He found it a tough job to 
struggle up to the Thames, which he crossed 
a little above London; tough almost as much 
because of the forests as because of the valiant 
Britons, although in the open field these were 
no match for the disciplined Roman regiments 
called "legions." It is this Caesar who wrote 
the first account of our island and our people 
which has come down to us. He was very 
much astonished at the tide which he found 
in the Channel; and his book leaves us with 
the impression that the spirit of the dear mother- 
land had breathed valour and cunning in 
defence into the whole British people. 
Second For ninety years after his raid no Roman 
i^aSon armies came to the island. But Roman traders 
A.D. 43. came and Romanized Celts from France, who 
laughed at the "savage" ways of the British 
Celts. Men began to talk, in the wooden or 
wattle huts of British Kings (hitherto believed 
by the Britons to be the most magnificent 
buildings imaginable), of the name and fame 
of the great empire, of streets paved with 
marble, and of houses roofed with gilded 
bronze; of the invincible Roman legions clad 




THE LANDING OF THE ROMANS 



THE ROMAN CONQUEST 15 

in steel and moving like steel machines; of 
the great paved roads driven like arrows over 
hill and dale, through the length and breadth 
of Western Europe, of the temples and baths, 
of the luxurious waterways of the South. 
Rome attracted and terrified many peoples, 
even before she conquered them. The Roman 
Emperor seemed to men who had never seen 
him to be a very god upon earth. 

But the Roman conquest began in earnest The 
in the year 43, and within half a century was commest 
fairly complete. At first it was cruel; Roman 
soldiers were quite pitiless; for those who 
resisted they had only the sword or slavery. 
The north and west of Britain resisted long and 
hard and often. Once under the great Queen 
Boadicea, whose statue now stands on West- 
minister Bridge in London, the Britons cut to 
pieces a whole Roman legion. Then came 
cruel vengeance and reconquest; but, after 
reconquest, came such peace and good govern- 
ment as Britain had never seen before. The The Peace 
Romans introduced into all their provinces a gave.^°™^ 
system of law so fair and so strong that almost 
all the best laws of modern Europe have been 
founded on it. Everywhere the weak were 
protected against the strong; castles were 
built on the coast, with powerful garrisons in 
them; fleets patrolled the Channel and the 



16 THE BRITISH ISLANDS 

North Sea. Great roads crossed the island 
from east to west and from north to south. 
Great cities, full of all the luxuries of the South, 
grew up. Temples were built to the Roman 
gods; and country-houses of rich Roman gentle- 
men, of which you may still see the remains 
here and there. These gentlemen at first 
talked about exile, shivered and cursed the 
"beastly British climate," heated their houses 
with hot air, and longed to get home to Italy. 
But many stayed; their duty or their business 
obliged them to stay: and into them too the 
spirit of the dear motherland entered and 
became a passion. Their children, perhaps, 
never saw Rome; but Rome and Britain had an 
equal share of their love and devotion, and 
they, perhaps, thought something like this: 



The Roman Centurion Speaks 
A Roman Legate, I had the news last night. My cohort's 

soldier ■• -t ■, 

who loves ordered home, 

Britain, "gy gj^-p ^^ Portus Itius and thence by road to 
Rome. 
I've marched the companies aboard, the arms 

are stowed below: 
Now let another take my sword. Command 
me not to go! 



i 



THE PEACE THAT ROME GAVE 17 

I've served in Britain forty years, from Vectis 

to the Wall 
I have none other home than this, nor any 

life at all. 
Last night I did not understand, but, now the 

hour draws near 
That calls me to my native land, I feel that 

land is here. 

Here where men say my name was made, 

here where my work was done, 
Here where my dearest dead are laid — my 

wife — my wife and son; 
Here where time, custom, grief and toil, age, 

memory, service, love. 
Have rooted me in British soil. Ah, how 

shall I remove .^^ 

For me this land, that sea, these airs, those 

folk and fields suffice. 
What purple Southern pomp can match our 

changeful Northern skies. 
Black with December snows unshed or pearled 

with August haze, 
The clanging arch of steel-gray March, or June's 

long-lighted days? 

You'll follow widening Rhodanus till vine and 
olive lean 



IS THE BRITISH ISLANDS 

Aslant before the sunny breeze that sweeps 

Nemausus clean 
To Arelate's triple gate; but let me linger on, 
Here where our stiff-necked British oaks con- 
front Euroclydon! 

You'll take the old Aurelian Road through 
shore-descending pines 

Where, blue as any peacock's neck, the Tyr- 
rhene Ocean shines. 

You'll go where laurel crowns are won, but 
will you e'er forget 

The scent of hawthorn in the sun, or bracken 
in the wet? 

Let me work here for Britain's sake — at any 

task you will — 
A marsh to drain, a road to make, or native 

troops to drill. 
Some Western camp (I know the Pict) or 

granite Border keep. 
Mid seas of heather derelict, where our old 

mess-mates sleep. 

Legate, I come to you in tears — my cohort 

ordered home ! 
I've served in Britain forty years. What 

should I do in Rome? 



ROME'S FAILURE 19 

Here is my heart, my soul, my mind — the 

only life I know — 
I cannot leave it all behind. Command me 

not to go! 

And peace was imposed all over Southern Mixture 
Britain; and the legions came to be stationed and"*'^ 
only on the frontier, afid hardly ever moved. ^«™^° 
No doubt at first these legions were recruited 
from all the regions over which Rome ruled, 
and she ruled from Euphrates to Tyne, from 
Rhine to Africa. Soon, however, they must 
have been recruited in Britain itself and from 
Britons. Celtic mothers bore British sons to 
Roman fathers, and crooned Celtic songs over 
the cradles of babies who would one day carry 
the Roman flag. The beautiful Latin tongue, 
which the Romans had brought with them, 
was enriched with many Celtic words. 

It was, however, a misfortune for Britain What 
that Rome never conquered the whole island, failed to 
The great warrior Agricola did, between a.d. ^°* 
79 and 85, penetrate far into Scotland; but he 
could leave no traces of civilization behind him, 
and Ireland he never touched at all. So 
Ireland never went to school, and has been a 
spoilt child ever since. And there was always 
a "Scottish frontier" to be guarded, and along 
this frontier the Emperor Hadrian, early in 



20 THE BRITISH ISLANDS 

the second century, began the famous Roman 
Wall. His successors improved on it until it 
Roman bccamc a mighty rampart of stone, eighty 
Wall, miles long, from Tyne to Solway, with ditches 
in front and behind and a strong garrison kept 
in its watch-towers. 

To the north of the wall roamed, almost 
untouched, certainly unsubdued, the wilder 
Celts whom the Romans called "Picts" or 
painted men; the screen of the wall seemed 
a perfectly sufficient defence against these. 
But prosperity and riches are often bad for 
men; they lead to the neglect of defence. I 
fear that Roman Britain went to sleep behind 
her walls, recruiting fell off, the strength of 
the legions became largely a "paper strength." 

Decay of And not ouly in Britain. The greatest 
power empire that the world has ever seen was slowly 

***^a.^d! ^yi^g ^t the heart, dying of too much power, 
too much prosperity, too much luxury. What 
a lesson for us all to-day! There were pirates 
abroad, who smelt plunder afar off, land- 
thieves and sea- thieves. They began to break 

i^^^^ions through the frontiers. One fine day the ter- 
Picts. rible news came to York, the capital of Roman 
Britain, that the Picts were over the wall. 
Where was the commander-in-chief.? Oh! he 
was at Bath taking the waters to cure his in- ; 
digestion. Where was the prefect (the highest 




THE BUILDING OF THE WALL 



ROME'S FAILURE 21 

representative of the Emperor)? Oh! he lived 
at Lyons in Southern France; for he governed 
France as well as Britain. Quite possibly he 
was actually in rebellion against the Emperor 
of Rome, and was thinking of marching down 
to Italy to make himself Emperor! If so, he 
would be for withdrawing the few soldiers that 
were left in Britain instead of sending more to 
defend it. "A few barbarians more or less 
over the wall" mattered very little to a man 
who lived, by neglecting his duties, in Southern 
France; *'they could easily be driven back 
next year." 

But it soon came to be less easy, and the Fail of 

t 1 • J. I. ii p Roman 

barbarians soon came to be more than a tew. Britain. 
An officer, called the "Count of the Saxon 
Shore," was created to watch against the pirates. 
The cities of Britain, hitherto undefended by 
fortifications, hastily began to run up walls 
for themselves. One day even these walls 
were in vain. Rome, Britain, and civilization 
were equally coming to an end, and it would 
be long before they revived. Half a century 
had completed the Roman conquest of the 
island; two and a half centuries of happy peace English 
had followed; in another half century it was f^^^^^^ 

from 

all over. Long before the last Roman legions North 
were withdrawn, in 407, pirates had been break- aboS^°^ 
ing down all the walls and defences of Britain. 450'. ^^^" 



22 THE BRITISH ISLANDS 

Celtic Picts from the North, Celtic Scots from 
Ireland; worse than all, down the North-east 
wind came terrible "Englishmen," "Saxons," 
from the shores of North Germany and Den- 
mark. Rome had forced the wolf and the eagle 
to content themselves with rabbits and lambs; 
now they were going to feast once more upon 
the corpses of men. 



CHAPTER II 
SAXON ENGLAND 

a 

The Pirates in England 

When Rome was rotten-ripe to her fall. 
And the sceptre passed from her hand. 

The pestilent Picts leaped over the wall 
To harry the British land. 

The little dark men of the mountain and waste, 

So quick to laughter and tears, 
They came panting with hate and haste 

For the loot of five hundred years. 

They killed the trader, they sacked the shops, 
They ruined temple and town — 

They swept like wolves through the standing 
crops 
Crying that Rome was down. 

They wiped out all that they could find 
Of beauty and strength and worth, 

But they could not wipe out the Viking's Wind, 
That brings the ships from the North. 

"^ 23 



M SAXON ENGLAND 

They could not wipe out the North-east gales 5 

Nor what those gales set free — 

The pirate ships with their close-reefed sails. 
Leaping from sea to sea. 

They had forgotten the shield-hung hull 

Seen nearer and more plain, 
Dipping into the troughs like a gull. 

And gull-like rising again — 

The painted eyes that glare and frown. 
In the high snake-headed stem. 

Searching the beach while her sail comes down, 
They had forgotten them! 

There was no Count of the Saxon Shore 

To meet her hand to hand, 
As she took the beach with a surge and a roar. 

And the pirates rushed inland. 

The Early in the fourth century the Roman 
^cS^ Empire had become Christian. And among 
tians. the benefits Rome had brought to Britain was 
the preaching of the Gospel. We know very 
little about the old British Church, except the 
names of several martyrs who died for the 
faith before the conversion of the Empire. 
One of these was the soldier, St. Alban, to 
whom the greatest abbey in England was 




BRITAIN 

to illustrate History from the 

coming of the Romans 

to the Norman Conquest 

Lindisfarne Eijg:lish "Miles 
Hoty L. o lo 20 30 40 50 TOO 



0^ Uplands ouef 600 feet ^ 

'Vn-^"^ f^oi-ests. ^ 

.<c^«' Marshes «• "^ 



-S6 



Bojnan Roads -- ^ - 

Roman Cities and Forts 

in Capital letters LONDINIUM 



iWhitby 



MONA 
(Anglesey)r 

4 



segontium!*3>C 

(Carnarvon^^-'r^^ 



BREMETENti'AcU 

(Ribc^ieste. 

/p ,_ /MANCUNfb 






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^erse^rj^ 




X { StW I 

ftork-seyP^ii-'ncoln: 



'*mber 



[Hereford !<{.; 










^^5 




(Glouqester, ,ti'-^ »-.-xkvii. ii ---^ 



■^^wSlodunum 

;(raichester) 



?.AduAE SOLlI--^- 

-^.,5fe.SlIcl/estef\H-r-'^ ' ^ 



,JRPBR , 



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.l»^L^elnter8^rylTXYs'andwich_ 



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,ISCA»D|AiVINONIORU""' 

Eic^ter 

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ENGLISH 









'0^0^ Vo.. 






Lonsjitude West 4° of Greenwich 




Meridian o of Greenwich 



Emery Walksr sc. 



THE BRITISH CHRISTIANS 25 

afterward dedicated. It is probable, however, 
that, as in other parts of the Roman Empire, 
Britain was divided in bishoprics, churches were 
built, and heathen temples pulled down. 

Our English and Saxon friends, when they The 
first landed in Kent and Eastern Britain, were ^a?onr° 
violent — you might almost say conscientious |°^.. , 
— heathens. They feared and hated Chris- 
tianity and all other traces of Roman civiliza- 
tion; and they rooted out everything Roman 
that they could lay hands on. Other provinces 
of the Empire, Italy, France and Spain, were 
also being overrun by barbarians, but none 
of these was as remorseless and destructive 
as the Saxons. Therefore in Italy, France, 
and Spain the "re-making" of nations on the 
ruins of Rome began fairly soon, but not in 
Britain. The Saxons made a clean sweep of 
the eastern half of the island, from the Forth 
to the Channel and westward to the Severn. 
An old British chronicle gives us a hint of the 
awful thoroughness with which they worked. 
"Some therefore of the miserable remnant 
(of Britons) being taken in the mountains 
were murdered in great numbers, others con- 
strained by famine came and yielded them- 
selves to be slaves forever to their foes, running 
the risk of being instantly slain, which truly 
was the greatest favour that could be offered 



26 SAXON ENGLAND 

them: some others passed beyond the seas with 
loud lamentations." 
The The Saxons brought their wives and children 
Conq^ue^st with them, though it is difficult to believe that 
A°- ^^J- they were so stupid as to kill all the Britons 
instead of enslaving them and marrying their 
wives. Yet, if they had not done this, surely 
there would have been some traces left of Latin 
or Celtic speech, law, and religion. But there 
were none. When, in the eighth and ninth 
centuries, we begin to see a little into the dark- 
ness, we find that England has become a purely 
English country, with a purely English and 
rather absurd system of law, and a purely 
English language; while, as for religion, the 
people have to be converted all over again by 
a special mission from the Pope at Rome. 
Ruin of Probably the British made a very desperate 
*^^\w defence, and were only slowly beaten west- 
ward into Wales, Lancashire, Devon, and 
Cornwall. Something like two centuries passed 
before the English were thorough masters of 
the eastern half of the island. And all that 
while Roman temples, churches, roads, and 
cities were crumbling away and grass was 
growing over their ruins. Studying the history 
of those days is like looking at a battlefield 
in a fog. As the fog clears we get some notion 
of our dear barbarian forefathers. 



LIFE OF THE SAXONS 27 

The Saxon Englishman was a savage, with Life of the 
the vices and cruelties of an overgrown boy; ^*^o°«- 
a drunkard and a gambler, and very stupid. 
But he was a truth-teller, a brave, patient, 
and cool-headed fellow. A Roman historian 
describes him as "a free-necked man married 
to a white-armed woman who can hit as hard 
as horses kick." He honoured his women 
and he loved his home; and the spirit of the 
land entered into him, even more than into 
any of those who lived before or came after 
him. He never knew when he was beaten, 
and so he took a lot of beating. He was not 
quarrelsome by nature, and, indeed, when he 
had once settled down in Britain, he was much 
too apt, as his descendants are to-day, to 
neglect soldiering altogether. He forgot his 
noble trade of sailor, which had brought him 
to Britain, so completely that within two 
centuries his coasts were at the mercy of every 
sea-thief in Europe; and down the north-east 
wind the sea-thieves were always coming. 
England should always beware of the north- 
east wind. It blows her no good. 

Tilling the fields was the Saxon's real job; The 
he was a plough-boy and a cow-boy by nature, li^^\. 
and hke a true plough- and cow-boy he was boy. 
always grumbling. He hated being governed; 
he always stood up for his "rights," and often 



28 SAXON ENGLAND 

talked a lot of nonsense about them. He 
obeyed his kings when he pleased, which was 
not often, and these kings had very little 
power over him. But he loved his land, and 
he grubbed deep into it with his clumsy plough. 
In the sweat of his brow he ate the bread and 
pork and drank the beer (too much of the beer) 
which he raised on it. 
A Saxon Evcry English village could keep itself to 
^' *^^" itself, since it produced nearly everything its 
people wanted, except salt, iron, and millstones, 
which could only be found in certain favoured 
places. In most villages there was a sort of 
squire called a "thegn," who paid something, 
either a rent or a service of some kind, to a 
king or to a bigger thegn, and owned much 
more land than the ordinary freemen. Prob- 
ably also he owned a few slaves, whether of 
English or British birth. There was also a 
smith and a miller, a swineherd to take the 
village pigs into the forest to feed, a shepherd 
and a cowherd, and a doctor who would be 
more or less of a wizard. After the conversion 
to Christianity in the seventh century there 
was also in most villages a priest. Of the free- 
men, every head of a family owned certain 
strips of land on which he grew corn, and each 
helped his neighbour to plough the land with 
teams of oxen. There was also a great common 



I 



SAXON GOVERNMENT 29 

on which all freemen could pasture their 
cattle, and a wood wherein the pigs fed. There 
were few horses, there was no hay to feed them 
on, cows were only killed for food when they 
were too old to draw the plough, sheep were 
chiefly kept for wool, and so the pig was the 
real friend of hungry men. 

There was in each district some sort of rude The small 
government by some sort of rude king, whose kfng" 
ancestor may have been a leading pirate of the *^°™^" 
first ship-load of Saxons who landed near that 
place. No doubt many tiny " kingdoms" sprang 
up, as ship-load after ship-load of pirates explored 
and settled inland. Probably the first "king- 
doms" extended as far as an armed man could 
walk before a day's honest fighting, but these 
would naturally melt into or be conquered into 
larger territories. In the seventh century there 
were at least seven little kingdoms, but, by the 
eighth, only three of any importance remained : 

1. Northumbria, stretching from the Forth The three 
to the Humber, and westward to the hills sJ|on 
that part Cumberland and Lancashire from ¥°^' 
Yorkshire and Northumberland. 

2. Mercia, or Middle England, reaching 
from the Humber to the Thames and west- 
ward to the Severn. 

3. Wessex, comprising all south of the 
Thames and as far west as Devon. 



30 SAXON ENGLAND 

When they were tired of fighting the Britons, 
the kings of these small kingdoms constantly- 
fought each other. 
Their There were laws, or, rather, deeply rooted 
^*^menT- '^customs," mostly connected with fighting, 
their or COWS or ploughing. There were rude courts 
of justice, which would fine a man so many 
sheep or so many silver pennies for murder or 
wounding or cow-stealing. The king had a 
council of "wise men," who met in his wooden 
house to advise him, and to drink with him 
afterward at his rude feasts. There were 
gods, called Tiu and Woden and Thor and 
Freya, from whom our Tuesday, Wednesday, 
Thursday and Friday are derived. They lived 
in a heaven called Valhalla, where, our ances- 
tors thought, there was an endless feast of 
pork and strong ale, with no headaches to 
follow. 
A barbar- All this, as you scc, was a barbarous bus- 
*'"^ dom iness, after the well-organized, civilized Roman 
life; but at least it was a life with a good deal 
of freedom in it. Rome had stifled freedom 
too much; the Saxons went to the other ex- 
treme. It is quite possible to have too much 
freedom, and you will see what a price 
these Saxons, before the end of their six 
hundred years of freedom, had to pay for 
theirs. 



SAXON GOVERNMENT 31 

After the sack of the City when Rome was xhe 
sunk to a name, Saxon 

XT 1 IT founda- 

In the years when the hghts were darkened, tions of 
or ever St. Wilfred came, ^^^^ ' 

Low on the borders of Britain (the ancient 
poets sing) 

Between the cHff and the forest there ruled a 
Saxon King. 

Stubborn were all his people from cotter 

to overlord. 
Not to be cowed by the cudgel, scarce to be 

schooled by the sword. 
Quick to turn at their pleasure, cruel to cross 

in their mood, 
And set on paths of their choosing as the hogs 

of Andred's Wood. 

Laws they made in the Witan, the laws of 

flaying and fine — 
Common, loppage and pannage, the theft 

and the track of kine, 
Statues of tun and of market for the fish and 

the malt and the meal. 
The tax on the Bramber packhorse, and the 

tax on the Hastings keel. 
Over the graves of the Druids and under the 

wreck of Rome, 
Rudely but surely they bedded, the plinth 

of the days to come. 



owners. 



32 SAXON ENGLAND 

Behind the feet of the Legions and before 

the Normans' ire. 
Rudely but greatly begat they the bones of 

state and of shire; 
Rudely but deeply they laboured, and their 

labour stands till now, 
If we trace on our ancient headlands, the 

twist of their eight-ox plough. 

Growth of There was no king really powerful enough 
^"^^n^w^prs to rule the whole island. In a land of forest 
and swamp, where roads hardly exist for eight 
months of the year, it must always be difficult 
for armed men, judges or traders to pass from 
place to place, except on horseback; and the 
Saxons were no great horse-soldiers. I think 
we shall see that it was the knight and his horse, 
who, from the eleventh century onward, first 
made the rule of one king possible over the 
whole island. Meanwhile, the "great men" 
of the Saxons, "thegns," "aldermen," "earls," 
or whatever they were called, took most of 
the power, and naturally began to oppress 
their poorer neighbours. They got the courts 
of justice into their own hands; they grabbed 
the land, they exacted rents and services from 
the poorer landowners; they made what is 
called a "feudal" state of society. In the 
year 600 a free Kentish farmer might own 120 



THE SAXONS BECOME CHRISTIAN 33 

acres of land; in the year 1000 he seldom 
owned more than 30, and for this he probably- 
had to pay a heavy rent and to labour on some 
great man's land. 

The first rudiments of civilization were The 
brought back to this barbarous England by become 
the Christian missionaries whom Pope Gregory aftej-"*^^" 
sent thither in the year 597. St. Augustine ^97. 
came and preached in Kent and became the 
first Archbishop of Canterbury. From Canter- 
bury missionaries spread all over the island, 
and, in a century, the heathenism that had 
rooted out Christianity two hundred years 
before was quite gone. It seems that the 
fierce Saxon gods made a very poor fight of 
it. The old Roman capital of York recovered „• u 

^ ^ iiisnops 

its importance and became an archbishopric, and 
Some seventeen other bishoprics arose all over 
the country, and, even more important than 
the bishoprics, great abbeys and monas- 
teries full of monks and nuns. A monk is a 
person who retires from the world in order to 
devote himself to prayer with a view to saving 
his own soul. 

Besides preaching the true Gospel of our ^jf^g ^j 
Lord, these missionaries preached the worship land to the 

. , monks. 

of samts, and every church was dedicated to 
some particular saint, who was believed to 
watch over its congregation. A gift of land 



34 SAXON ENGLAND 

to a monastery was called "a gift to God and 
His saints." If you were not holy enough to 
go into the monastery, the next best thing you 
could do, said the monks, was to give your 
land to the saints. But this meant that you 
neglected your worldly duties, such as defend- 
ing your country, tilling your fields, providing 
for your wife and children. The world, in 
fact, was painted to our Saxon ancestors by 
the monks as such a terribly wicked place 
that the best thing they could do was to get 
Power of out of it as quickly as possible. The Popes 
t e ope. ^£ Kome, who had about this time made them- 
selves supreme heads of all Western Christen- 
dom, encouraged this view; and the monks 
were always devoted servants of the Popes. 
But there were other priests who were not 
monks, and these usually served the parish 
churches, which gradually but slowly grew up 
in England; they were always rather jealous 
of the monks. 
Life of the Humau lovc and common sense were too 
™'*" ^' strong to be taken in altogether by this new 
unworldly spirit. Even the monks themselves 
soon became very human, and, as they had to 
eat and drink, they had to cultivate their 
fields to raise food. Indeed, they soon began 
to do this more intelligently than most people; 
and so the monasteries became very rich. 




ST. AUGUSTINE PREACHING TO ETHELBERT 



POWER OF THE KINGS S5 

I think it is to the monks that we EngHsh owe 
our strong love of gardening and flowers; 
and also our love of fishing. The Church said 
you were to eat only fish and eggs in the season 
of Lent and on other "fast-days," and so every 
monastery, however far from a river, had to 
have a fish-pond well stocked with fish, or else 
live upon salt herrings, which were difficult 
to get far inland. I always like to think of 
the dear old monks, in their thick, black woollen 
frocks, with their sleeves tucked up, watching 
their floats in the pond. I hope they were 
always strictly truthful as to the size of the 
fish which they hooked but did not land. The 
monks also kept alive what remains of learning 
there were: they brought books from beyond 
the seas; they taught schools; made musical 
instruments, were builders, painters, and crafts- 
men of all kinds; and produced famous men of 
learning like Bede and Wilfred. English mis- 
sionaries went from English abbeys to preach 
the Gospel to heathen Germans. So rich and 
powerful did the Church become that in the 
councils of our tenth-century kings the bishops 
and abbots were even more important than 
the thegns and earls. 

The Church then taught men much and Power of 
tamed them a little. It certainly helped of North- 
to ward uniting the jarring kingdoms; for eS-S. 



36 SAXON ENGLAND 

Christian Northumbria, in the seventh century, 
was the first to exercise a real sort of leader- 
ship over the other kingdoms ; it was a North- 
umbrian king, Edwin, who built and gave 
his name to Edinburgh; it was in the North- 
umbrian monastery of Jarrow that the good 
monk Bede wrote the first history of England. 
You may still see Bede's tomb in Durham Ca- 
thedral, with the Latin rhyme on the great stone 
lid. The last important Northumbrian king 
fell fighting against the Picts beyond the Forth. 
Kings of Mercia had her turn of supremacy in the 
750-800* ^ig^itli century, under King Offa, who drove 
back the Welsh and took in a lot of their land 
beyond the Severn. Perhaps it was he who 
built a great rampart there called Offa's Dyke; 
beyond it, even to this day, all is ** Wales." 
Egbert, Then his family in turn was beaten by Egbert, 
Wessex, King of Wcsscx (802-39) . Thenceforth, Wessex 
was, in name at least, supreme over all England. 
If ever there was a capital city of England 
before Norman times it was Winchester, the 
chief town of Wessex; though London, one 
of the few Roman cities that have never been 
destroyed or left desolate, must always have 
Pirates bccu a morc important place of trade. From 
from Egbert King George V is directkj descended! 

Denmark ^ !• i 

and Egbert and his son and grandsons had to 
800-noo! meet a new and terrible foe. Down to the 




THE LANDING OF THE BANES 



THE DANES 37 

north-east wind, from Denmark, Norway, and 
tKe Baltic, all through the ninth, tenth, and 
eleventh centuries, a continual stream of fierce 
and cunning pirates began to pour upon 
Western Europe. We call them "the Danes," 
or North-men. The British Isles lay right 
in their path, and at one time or another they 
harried them from end to end. The churches, 
in which the principal wealth of the country 
was stored, were sacked; the monks were killed, 
and then the pirates went back to their ships. 
From Britain they went on to France and even 
into the Mediterranean: some of them, indeed, 
crossed the Northern Ocean to Iceland, to 
Greenland, to North America. Their ships, 
some 80 feet long, and 16 feet broad, with a 
draught of 4 feet, might carry crews of fifty men 
apiece, armed to the teeth in shirts of mail, 
and bearing heavy axes with shafts as long as 
a man. Often they came under pretence of 
trading in slaves, and would trade honestly 
enough if they thought the country too strong These 
to be attacked. About the middle of the begin to 
ninth century they began to settle and make Engilnd 
homes in the very lands they had been plunder- ^boutseo. 
ing. Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire, the East 
Riding of Yorkshire were regularly colonized 
by them. So were the Orkney and Shetland 
Isles, the Hebrides, Caithness, and Sutherland, 



88 SAXON ENGLAND 

as well as the Isle of Man and the eastern coast 
of Ireland. 

Their numbers were, however, small, and if 

Saxon England under weak kings had not 

enjoyed too much "freedom," they might have 

been beaten off; but it seemed impossible for 

the Saxons to collect an army in less than a 

month, or to keep it in the field when collected. 

Long before the English "host" was ready to 

"^Great fight, the piratcs had harried the land and 

Southlrn disappeared. Atlast Alfred the Great (871-901), 

England, graudsou of Egbert, began to turn the tide 

against the invaders. He defended Wessex 

all along the line of the Upper Thames, in 

battle after desperate battle, and at last beat 

a big Danish army somewhere in Wiltshire. 

The pirate king Guthrum agreed to become a 

Christian, and was allowed to settle with his 

men in North-eastern England. Soon after 

that we find English and "settled" Danes 

fighting valiantly for their country against fresh 

bands of Danish pirates. We may call Alfred 

the first real "King of England"; he picked up 

the threads of the national life which the 

Danes had cut to pieces. He translated good 

books into the Saxon tongue; he started the 

The great great history of England, called the " Chronicle," 

Wessex of which was kept year by year, in more than one 

century, monastery, down to 1154. He and his sou 



ETHELRED THE UNREADY 39 

Edward, and his grandsons Athelstan and 
Edmund, built fleets and fortresses, armed 
their people afresh and compelled them to 
fight in their own defence. For some years 
every fresh band of pirates met a warm reception 
and every rising of the Danes within the country 
was beaten down. King Edgar, 959-75, was 
called *'The Peaceful," and boasted that he 
had been rowed about on the river Dee by six 
lesser kings. 

It was a brief respite, 

For all about the shadowy kings, 
Denmark's grim ravens cowered their 
wings ; 

and in the reign of Edgar's foolish son, Ethelred 
the Unready, the pirates came back more King 
determined than before. Sweyn, king of SS'^un^ 
Denmark, came in person, and his son Canute; g^g^foie- 
and this time tHe Danes intended a thorough fresh 
and wholesale conquest. This time Wessex raids. 
fell also; even Canterbury was sacked, and its 
archbishop pelted to death with beef-bones 
after dinner. The "wise men" of unwise 
Ethelred were as useless as the House of Com- 
mons would be to-day if there were a big inva- 
sion. They talked, but did nothing. A country 
in such a plight wants a man to lead it to war; 
not thirty "wise men" or six hundred mem- 



40 SAXON ENGLAND 

bers of Parliament, with a sprinkling of traitors 

among them, to discuss how to make peace. 

Ethelred's "wise men" could only recommend 

him to buy off the Danes with hard cash called 

"Danegold" or "Dane-geld." The Danes 

^^ pocketed the silver pennies, laughed, and came 

"Dane- back for more. When for a moment there 

^^ ' arose a hero, Ethelred's son, Edmund Ironside, 

he fought in one year, as Alfred had fought, 

six pitched battles and almost beat Canute. 

Then he agreed to divide the island with Canute, 

King and was murdered in the next year (1017). 

T016- Canute ruled England until his death in 1053. 

1035. jj^ ruled Denmark and Norway also, and was 

in fact a sort of Northern Emperor. 



What ii is always a temptation to an armed and 
geld" agile nation 

means. ^^ ^^^j upou a neighbour and to sayi 

" We invaded you last night — we are quite 
prepared to fight. 
Unless you pay us cash to go away." 

And that is called asking for Dane-geld, 
And the people who ask it explain 

That you've only to pay 'em the Dane- 
geld 
And then you'll get rid of the Dane! 



WHAT DANE-GELD MEANS 41 

It is always a temptation to a rich and lazy- 
nation 
To puff and look important and to say: 
"Though we know we should defeat you, we 
have not the time to meet you. 
We will therefore pay you cash to go away." 

And that is called paying the Dane-geld; 

But we've proved it again and again. 
That if once you have paid him the 
Dane-geld 

You never get rid of the Dane! 

It is wrong to put temptation in the path of 
any nation. 
For fear they should succumb and go astray. 
So when you are requested to pay up or be 
molested, 
You will find it better policy to say: 

"We never pay any one Dane-geld, 
No matter how trifling the cost. 

For the end of that game is oppression 
and shame. 
And the nation that plays it is lost!" 

And Canute ruled England righteously. He 
turned Christian, he rebuilt the abbeys and 
churches which his ancestors had burned, he 



42 SAXON ENGLAND 

kept a strong little army of English or Danish 

soldiers about his person, and he kept order 

and peace. His sons, however, were good for 

King nothing; and in 1042 Edward, the younger 

t^e^CoS^ son of Ethelred, was recalled from " Normandy," 

fessor, whither he had been sent to be out of Canute's 

1042-1066. 

* way, and ruled England as king till 1066. 
Dangers Now, as wc approach the end of the Saxon 
from period of our history let us take a look at our 

abroad. ^ ^ ^ '^ 

foreign neighbours. Those who will be im- 
portant to us are four in number. 

1. Denmark and Norway; except in the 
reign of Canute, these were always hostile. 
Scotland. %, Scotland, once Pict-land, the district 
north of the Forth and Clyde. Celtic "Scots" 
from Ireland had conquered Celtic Picts from 
the sixth to the ninth century. They had 
brought with them the Christian faith, which 
had been preached in Ireland by St. Patrick 
in the fifth century. These Scots and Picts 
continually raided Northumbria, just as the 
Picts had raided Roman Britain; and Canute 
had bought off their raids by giving to them all 
the land as far south as the Tweed, which thus 
became the "border," as we have it to-day, be- 
tween England and Scotland. Cumberland and 
Lancashire seem to have remained an independ- 
ent Celtic country till the end of the eleventh 
century, just as Wales did till the thirteenth. 



DANGERS FROM ABROAD 43 

3. Flanders, that is, roughly speaking, the Flanders. 
modern Holland and Belgium; a land already 
famous both for pirates and traders; it lies 

right opposite the mouth of the Thames, and 
was just the place where the pirates could sell 
the gold candlesticks which they stole out 
of English churches. 

4. Normandy, the great province on the Nor- 
north coast of France, of which the river Seine ^nd%e 
is the centre. This land the great Danish Normans. 
pirate, RoUo, had harried early in the tenth 
century, until the wearied King of France gave 

it him to keep, on condition that he would 
become a Christian. The "Normans," that 
is North-men, married French wives, and 
became the cleverest, the fiercest, and, accord- 
ing to the ideas of the day, the most pious 
of Frenchmen. They did not cease to be 
adventurers, and we find their young men 
seeking their fortunes all over Europe. They 
thought their Saxon neighbours very slow and 
stupid fellows, who were somehow in possession 
of a very desirable island which they managed 
very badly, and which it was the Norman's 
duty to take if possible. 

Now King Edward was at heart more a Duke 
Norman than an Englishman, so pious that he ^'"'*'°- 
was called "the Confessor," always confessing 
sins that he had not committed, and for- 



44 SAXON ENGLAND 

getting his real sin, which was the neglect of the 
defence of his island. Like the Normans, he 
despised his own people. He gave himself 
away to his young cousin, Duke William of 
Normandy, and would have liked to give the 
crown and land of England as well — in fact, 
he made some sort of promise to do so — and 
he filled his court with Norman favourites 
and bishops. England had never yet been a 
united country. Ethelred, and Canute after 
him, had allowed great "aldermen" or earls to 
govern it, one for Northumbria, one for Mercia, 
one for Wessex; Edward continued the same 
plan, and so these great earls were more power- 
ful than the King himself. Northumbria and 
Mercia were largely Danish at heart and looked 
more to Denmark than to Wessex for a king. 
It was on Wessex, then, that the main resist- 
ance to Normandy would fall if the Normans 
attacked England. 
Earl Edward had no children, and as he drew 
^Wessex! toward his death, the great Earl Harold of 
Wessex had to make up his mind whether he 
^^Ki^? would submit to Duke WiUiam of Normandy, 
1066. or call in Danish help, or seize the crown 
Invasions ^^ England for himself. Ambition and pa- 
prepared triotism both said "Seize it"; and on Edward's 
way and death, in January 1066, Harold did so. 
mandy' Daucs and Norwegians were on the alert 



BATTLE OF HASTINGS 45 

too; and it looked as if England might be 
crushed between two sets of enemies. For 
William had long been preparing for a spring 
at it: he had won the friendship of Flanders; 
and he had the Pope on his side, for the Eng- 
lish Church was by no means too obedient 
to the Pope at this time. William now set 
about collecting a great army of the best 
fighting men that France, Brittany, and Flan- 
ders could produce. Our brave Harold, on 
his side, got the Wessex men under arms, and 
kept them watching all the summer. Northern 
England could not help him, for, a month 
before William landed from France, a mighty 
Norwegian host appeared in the Humber. 

Harold, then, had to prepare to meet two Battle of 
invasions; and most gallantly he met them. Bridge, 
He flew to York, smashed the Norwegians to temberr^ 
pieces at Stamford Bridge, and flew south 
again: but before he reached London William 
had landed in Sussex. There, upon October Battle of 
14th, on or near the spot where Battle Abbey 10^6^6^^^' 
now stands, was fought the Battle of Hastings, ^'^^'^ber. 
one of the most decisive battles in history. It 
was the fight of French cavalry and archers 
against the English and Danish foot-soldiers 
and axe-men, a fight of valour and cunning 
against valour without cunning. All day they 
fought, till, in the autumn darkness, the last 



46 SAXON ENGLAND 

of Harold's axe-men had fallen beside their 
dying King, and the few English survivors 
had fled toward London. One of them left 
a bag of coins in a ditch at Sedlescombe, which 
was dug out a few years ago; the poor little 
silver pieces are a token of the many foreign 
countries with which Old England had dealings. 
Results of The Battle of Hastings decided, though not 
man Con- evcu William knew it, that the great, slow, 
quest. (Jogged English race was to be governed and 
disciplined (and at first severely bullied in 
the process) by a small number of the cleverest, 
strongest, most adventurous race then alive. 
Nothing more was wanted to make our island the 
greatest country in the world. The Saxons had 
been sinking down into a sleepy, fat, drunken, 
unenterprising folk. The Normans were tem- 
perate in food and drink, highly educated, as 
education went in those days, restless, and 
fiery. They brought England back by the 
scruff of the neck into the family of European 
nations, back into close touch with the Roman 
Church, to which a series of vigorous and 
clever Popes was then giving a new life. Such 
remains of Roman ideas of government and 
order as were left in Europe were saved for 
us by the Normans. The great Roman em- 
pire was like a ship that had been wrecked on 
a beach; its cargo was plundered by nation 



WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR 47 

after nation. But if any nation had got the 
Hon's share of its leavings it was the French- 
men, and through the Frenchmen the Nor- 
mans, and through the Normans the Enghsh. 

It cost WilHam about six years of utterly The 
ruthless warfare to become master of all Eng- com^"^^*^ 
land. England resisted him bit by bit; its ^QQ^^r^^ 
leaders had a dozen different plans; he had but 
one plan, and he drove it through. He was 
going to make an England that would resist 
the next invader as one people. He had to do 
terrible things: he had to harry all Yorkshire 
into a desert; he had to drive all the bravest 
English leaders into forest and fen, or over the 
Scottish border, and to kill them when he 
caught them. He spared no man who stood 
in his way, but he spared all who asked his 
mercy. He could not subdue Scotland; but 
once he marched to the Tay and brought the 
Scottish king Malcolm to his knees for the time. 

William could not quite give up the plan The great 
of governing England by great earls; he was iand™^° 
obliged to reward the most powerful of his o^'^^''^- 
French followers with huge grants of English 
land; and these followers, who had been quite 
accustomed to rebel against him in Normandy, 
often rebelled against him and his descendants 
in England. But his gifts of land were nearly 
always scattered in such a way that one great 



48 SAXON ENGLAND 

man might have land perhaps in ten different 
counties, but not too much in any one place. 
Besides, every landowner, big or little, had to 
swear a strong oath to be faithful to the King. 
All gifts of land were to come only from the 
King, all courts of justice should depend upon 
the King alone. It remained for William's 
great-grandson Henry II to put all this down 
in black and white, in ink, on parchment. 
Henry knew, what even William had not 
learned, that the pen is a much more terrible 
and lasting recorder than the sword. 
King In a word, William would be King not only 
S-10S7! of Wessex but of every rood of English land 
and of all men dwelling thereon. And so the 
country began once more to enjoy a peace it 
had never known since the Roman legions 
left. The sons of the very men who had fought 
William at Hastings flew to fight for William 
against some rebel Norman earl, and earls 
and other men found that if they wanted to 
play the game of rebellion they had better go 
back to France. And the actual number 
of Normans who remained in England and 
took root was really very small, though among 
them we should find nearly all the nobles, 
bishops, great abbots, and other leaders of the 
people. Very few Norman women came, so 
these men married English wives, and, within 



WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR 49 

150 years, all difference between Normans 
and Englishmen had vanished. The Norman 
Conquest of 1066 was the beginning of the 
history of the English race as one people 
and of England as a great power in Europe. 
You might say, indeed: 

England's on the anvil — hear the hammers wiiiiam' 
ring — ^'^'-k- 

Clanging from the Severn to the Tyne! 
Never was a blacksmith like our Norman 
King — 
England's being hammered, hammered, 
hammered into line! 

England's on the anvil! Heavy are the blows! 
(But the work will be a marvel when 
it's done) 
Little bits of kingdoms cannot stand against 
their foes. 
England's being hammered, hammered, 
hammered into one! 

There shall be one people — it shall serve one 
Lord — 
(Neither Priest nor Baron shall escape!) 
It shall have one speech and law, soul and 
strength and sword. 
England's being hammered, hammered, 
V hammered into shape! 



CHAPTER III 

THE NORMAN KINGS 1066-1154 

The So AT last there was going to be a real govern- 

the^kings ^^^^ in this country, and it was going to do its 

in Nor- duty. Few kings in the Middle Ages had any 

England, high idea of their ''duty toward their people" 

such as a great Roman emperor had, or such 

as King George V has. They chiefly thought 

of their country as a property, or ''estate," which 

they were going to cultivate mainly for their 

own benefit. But the hettev a king 's " estate " 

was cultivated, the better off were the people on 

it; and, when I say the " people," I mean every 

one except a few, perhaps a couple of hundred 

of the "barons" or greatest landowners. A 

king could only grow very rich and powerful 

when his country was at peace at home and well 

armed against foreign foes; his people could 

only grow rich under the same conditions. 

Their Not SO the great barons. Each of them could 

with the most casily increase his riches at the expense 

1066^1175.' ^^ some other great baron or of the king; and 

the people who lived near him would be the first 

50 



POWER OF THE KINGS 51 

to suffer if he were allowed to do so. William had 
been obliged to allow his barons and earls to judge 
and govern their tenants in accordance with those 
"'feudal'* customs which had come to be univer- 
sal in Western Europe since Roman law had been 
lost and strong government with it. The great 
kings who succeeded him slowly, painfully, out 
of scanty material, had to recreate a strong 
government, and, so, to give peace and order. 

Now of the first four, whom alone we call 
"Norman" kings, three were wise and strong — • 
Wilham I, WiUiam II, and Henry I — and the 
fourth, Stephen, was foolish and weak. So, 
while the first sixty-nine years after the con- 
quest were a time of increasing peace and pros- 
perity, the next nineteen were the most dreadful 
period in our history. 

Remember that the Norman barons were only 
five or six generations removed from the fierce 
Danish pirates who followed Rollo to France. 
There, as there were no strong kings to restrain 
them, they had been accustomed to build cas- 
tles and to make their tenants fight for them 
in their private quarrels. W^hen they got to 
England, and grew richer in lands and tenants 
than they had been in Normandy, they expected 
to play their familiar game with even greater 
success. Their kings, however, from the first, 
determined they should not do so. 



52 WILLIAM I 

The William found, in the slow, undisciplined old 
win^heip Saxon life, several things which served him to 
^^ag^ist keep his barons in order. For instance, there 

the ^as an officer in every county called a sheriff; 

barons. j i V 

he collected the King s rents and taxes; he 
presided over the rude court of justice which 
The was held in every county; he was supposed to 
lead to battle the free landowners of that county. 
William made his sheriffs much more powerful, 
and made them responsible for the peace 
of their counties. In England, too, there had 
Castles, been few castles, and these only stockades of 
wood on the top of earthen mounds; whereas in 
France every baron had a castle. On the 
Welsh and Scottish borders William was obliged 
to allow, and even to encourage, his followers 
to build castles, but elsewhere he forbade it. 
But he built a great many royal castles and 
filled them with faithful paid soldiers. Again, 
in Normandy there had been barons as rich in 
lands and money as the Duke himself; but 
William kept enormous tracts of English land 
in his own hands, and so made the Crown ten 
times richer than any baron. In Normandy 
Taxes, the Dukc had no real system of taxes; in Eng- 
land the King could and did levy a regular tax 
of so many shillings on each estate. Ethelred 
had begun this in order to get money to bribe 
the Danes; the later kings had continued it. 



DOMESDAY BOOK 53 

Many estates were, however, free from this Domes- 
tax, and no doubt it was always difficult to 1085. ^^ ' 
collect. So, in 1085, William sent officers to 
every village and county in England to find out 
who must pay the tax and how much each must 
pay. These officers called together a sort of 
"jury " of the villagers, who declared the value of 
the estate. The results were collected and 
written down in "Domesday Book," which you 
may see in the British Museum. An extract 
from it will run somewhat like this: "County 
of Cambridge: In Blackacre are ten hides 
(the hide is an old measure of land, say 120 
acres). Thurstan holds it. In King Edward's 
time Wulfstan held it. It was worth £2 Qs. Sd. 
Now it is worth £4 13^. 4(^. It never paid tax. 
There is land for eight ploughs. There are two 
freeholders and ten serfs. The priest holds 
half a hide. There is a mill, value 10s. There 
is wood for 100 pigs, and pasture for 20 
cows." 

Are you astonished at the small value of Old 
land.f^ You must remember that you could MSiey. 
then buy with £l what might now cost you 
£40. For there was little silver and less gold 
in Europe before the discovery of America. 
Few gold coins were made in England before 
the reign of Edward III. 

From" Domesday Book "we can make a rough 



54 WILLIAM I 

The guess at the population of England in the 

tion"^of eleventh century, say about 2,000,000, whereas 

England now it is ovcr 40,000,000. The book does not 

m 1085. . IP 1 ' 1 

mention the number of people m the towns, 
but in many towns it does mention the number 
of houses. Probably no town, except London, 
had then as many as ten thousand people. Of 
many places the book says that they were 
"waste," that is, had been burned, either by 
accidental fires (which must constantly have 
been occurring when all buildings were of wood) 
or by Danes or Normans in the process of con- 
Customs quest. It also tells something of the "customs" 
and laws, ^j^j^^jj prevailed in different counties and towns. 
We are getting near an age when we shall be 
able to call such customs "Laws." The Norman 
kings tried to use old English customs and to 
improve them. But theft and murder were still 
reckoned more as offences against the family 
of the person wronged than as crimes against 
the state. You could still atone for such of- 
fences by a fine. It was not till late in the 
twelfth century that you would infallibly 
be hanged if you were caught; and the cer- 
tainty of punishment is what really prevents 
Free ^rime. 
land- Now, you cau see that the result of an in- 

owners . . . ' 

and irn- quiry like Domesday was that the kings knew 
tenants, a great deal about their country and about their 



LIFE IN THE COUNTRY 55 

people. They would know, for instance, what 
great baron or earl was really dangerous; on 
what part of England what taxes could be levied, 
and so on. No doubt the new Norman land- 
owners were often hard to their Saxon tenants. 
But it would not pay them to be too hard. 
They wanted rents and labour, and a starving 
man cannot pay rent or work in the fields. Life in the 
The land was the only source of riches, and *^°"" ^^' 
therefore every gentleman had to be first and 
foremost a farmer, and his tenants under him 
had to be farmers or farm labourers too. 
Domesday mentions, under strange names, a 
great number of different classes of farming 
tenants; but, within the next century, we find 
that all these are melted away into two, the 
free and the unfree, the freeholders and the 
' ' villeins " or * ' serfs . ' ' The former are men whose 
land averages perhaps forty acres. They pay 
some small rent in money or in produce to the 
squire or "lord of the manor," they follow the 
sheriff to battle when he bids them. The 
villein perhaps farms nearly as much land as 
the freeholder. But he is not free; he is bound 
to pay a rent in labour, say two or even three 
days a week on the squire's land, many extra 
days at harvest time, and perhaps to pay so 
many eggs, or pigs, or hens every year; nor may 
he sell his land or go away without his squire 's 



56 WILLIAM I 

leave. In fact he is very much at the mercy of 
the squire until the latter half of the twelfth 
century, when the King's Law begins to pro- 
tect him against the squire, to hang him if he 
commits crimes, and to enroll him as a soldier. 
But it will not pay the squire to oppress him 
too much if he is to get good work out of him. 
These clever Normans, all but a few of the great- 
est barons, soon made common cause with their 
tenants, soon became English at heart. Over 
them, too, the good land threw its dear familiar 
spell, and made them love it beyond all things. 



Norman and Saxon 



Views of " My son," said the Norman Baron, " I am dying, 
^ ^"bTron and you will be heir 

about his To all the broad acres in England that William 

property. *=" 

in 1100. gave me for my share 

When we conquered the Saxon at Hastings, and 

a nice little handful it is. 
But before you go over to rule it I want you to 

understand this: 



"The Saxon is not like us Normans; his 

manners are not so polite; 
But he never means anything serious till he 

talks about justice and right; 



NORMAN AND SAXON 57 

When he stands Hke an ox in the furrow with 
his sullen set eyes on your own, 

And grumbles, 'This isn't fair dealing,' my son, 
leave the Saxon alone. 

"You can horsewhip your Gascony archers, or 

torture your Picardy spears. 
But don't try that game on the Saxon; you'll 

have the whole brood round your ears. 
From the richest old Thane in the county to the 

poorest chained serf in the fields. 
They '11 be at you and on you like hornets, and, 

if you are wise, you will yield ! 

"But first you must master their language, their 

dialect, proverbs, and songs. 
Don't trust any clerk to interpret when they 

come with the tale of their wrongs. 
Let them know that you know what they're 

saying; let them feel that you know what 

to say; 
Yes, even when you want to go hunting, hear 

them out if it takes you all day. 

"They'll drink every hour of the daylight and 

poach every hour of the dark, 
It's the sport, not the rabbits, they're after 

(we've plenty of game in the park). 



58 WILLIAM I 

Don't liang them or cut off their fingers. 

That 's wasteful as well as unkind. 
For a hard-bitten, South-country poacher makes 

the best man-at-arms you can find. 

'* Appear with your wife and the children at 
their weddings and funerals and feasts; 

Be polite but not friendly to bishops; be good 
to all poor parish priests ; 

Say "we," "us," and "ours" when you're talk- 
ing, instead of "you fellows" and "I." 

Don't ride over seeds; keep your temper; and 
never you tell 'em a lie!'^ 

Life in the The towus wcrc uo doubt horrid places. The 
fortification of one or more " boroughs " in each 
county had been begun by the son and grand- 
sons of King Alfred in their wars against the 
Danes. Besides a wooden castle on a mound 
of earth, there would probably be some sort 
of wooden paling round the towns; and in the 
twelfth century palings would be replaced by 
stone walls. London, York, and Chester probably 
kept their old Roman walls of stone and occa- 
sionally repaired them. As for cleanliness and 
what we now call "sanitation," there was none. 
All refuse was thrown into the streets, which 
only rainstorms washed, and where pigs, dogs, 
and kites scavenged freely. Each trade or 



LIFE IN THE TOWNS 59 

craft had its own street, and a walk down 
''Butcher's Row" would probably be unpleas- 
ing to modern noses. But there was strong 
patriotism in the towns, and great rivalry be- 
tween them. A townsman from Abingdon 
was a suspected "foreigner" to the citizens of 
Oxford. In Sussex to-day the old folk in some 
villages speak of a hop-picker from another 
village as a "foreigner." 

Both in town and country the food, even of The 
the poorest, was fairly plentiful. Salt meat, of°?he 
mainly pork, and in Lent salt fish, was the rule, people. 
and was washed down by huge floods of strong 
beer. There were no workhouses and no pro- 
vision for the poor except charity, but charity 
(called "almsgiving") was universal, and beggars 
swarmed everywhere. If no one else would 
feed them, the monks always would, and I 
fear they made little difference between those 
who were really in need and those who preferred 
begging to working. Washing was almost un- 
known. Even in the King's household, while 
there were hundreds of servants in the cooking 
departments, there were only four persons in the 
laundry. Horrible diseases like leprosy were 
common, and occasionally pestilence swept 
away whole villages and streets of people. 

Life then was undoubtedly shorter, and its The 

,.. Ti I , ,.,. jNorman 

conditions harder, than to-day; but I think it Church. 



60 WILLIAM I 

was often merrier. Holidays were much more 
frequent; for the all-powerful Church forbade 
work on the very numerous saints' days. Re- 
ligion influenced every act of life from the cra- 
dle to the grave. All the village feasts and fairs 
centred round the village church and were 
blessed by some saint. The Norman bishops 
at once woke up the sleepy Saxon priests and 
abbots, taught them to use better music, more 
splendid and more frequent services, cleaner ways 
of life. Stone churches replaced the w ooden 
ones, and those mighty Norman cathedrals, 
so much of which remains to-day, began to grow 
up. The zeal for monkery continued right into 
the thirteenth century, although a pious Nor- 
man gentleman seldom went into a monastery 
himself till his fighting days were over. In the 
Church a career was open to the poorest village 
lad who was clever and industrious; he might 
rise to be abbot, bishop, councillor of kings, or 
even Pope. All schools were in the hands 
of churchmen, and Latin was the universal 
language of the Church throughout Western 
Europe. 
The In King William's Great Council, which 
^^^^ll took the place of the Saxon "Wise Men," and 
Council, which became the direct father of the House 
of Lords, there would sit perhaps 150 great lay 
barons, nineteen bishops, and some thirty 



THE KING'S GREAT COUNCIL 61 

abbots; but the churchmen would be the most 
learned, the most cunning and the most regular 
attendants. Though this Great Council met 
only for a few days in each year, the King would 
need secretaries, and lawyers, and officials of 
one kind or another to be continually about his 
person; and most of these would be churchmen 
whom he would reward with bishoprics and 
abbeys and livings. So far as there was what 
we now call a " Ministry " or a "Privy Council," 
it consisted mainly of churchmen. 

So powerful indeed was the Church that Quarrels 
quarrels between it and the strong kings were of King^with 
frequent occurrence during the next century ^q^^j.^^^ 
or two. The churchmen were too apt to look 
to the Pope as their real head instead of the 
King. The Popes always tried to keep the 
Church independent of the King. They wanted 
the clergy to pay no taxes for their lands, to 
have separate courts of justice, to be governed 
by other laws than those of the laymen, and yet 
to be wholly defended by the kings and laymen. 
Now no good king approved of these demands, 
which were indeed monstrous if you consider 
that the clergy owned between one quarter and 
one third of the land of England, and were get- 
ting more and more, from gifts by pious laymen, 
every day. Wilham I had to grant separate 
courts of justice, and he had no actual quarrel 



62 WILLIAM I 

with the Pope, mainly because his archbishop, 
Lanfranc, was a very wise man. But WilHam II 
and Henry I each had sharp quarrels with Arch- 
bishop Anselm, while as for poor Stephen, he 
was at the mercy of the great bishops. 
Task of I don 't think you want to know at what date 
Norman ^^is or that barou rebelled against William or 
kings. Henry, or at what date William or Henry sent 
an army against the King of France or the 
Welsh; I would rather that you would under- 
stand how these kings were pursuing, on the 
whole, two main tasks. First, they were trying 
to make England and Wales one compact king- 
dom, and, secondly, they were obliged, because 
they were Dukes of Normandy, to quarrel with 
the Kings of France. It was they, then, who 
founded our 800-year-long hostility to the gal- 
lant Frenchmen, which is now, happily, at 
an end. 
Begin- The first of these tasks was mainly left to the 
the^Con- great Norman barons, the Earls of Chester, 
*^"waief Shrewsbury and Gloucester, who built castles 
on the Welsh border and sent continual expe- 
ditions far into Wales. William II once marched 
himself to the foot of Snowdon, and gave 
the Welsh thieves a very severe lesson against 
stealing English cattle and murdering English 
settlers. Henry I started a regular colony of 
Englishmen in Pembrokeshire. Welsh ^'princes " 



QUARRELS WITH KING OF FRANCE 63 

continued to exist till the end of the thirteenth 
century, but only once troubled England seri- 
ously after Henry I's time. 

In the North-west, William II completely 
conquered Westmoreland, Lancashire, and Cum- and of 
berland, made them English ground forever, land; 
and rebuilt the old Roman fortress of Carlisle. 
On the Scottish border William I built a great 
fortress at Newcastle-on-Tyne; but this did not attitude 
stop King Malcolm's raids, for many Saxons, Norman 
who had lost their lands in 1066, had fled to Scotland. 
Scotland and helped in these raids. But 
William II and Henry I managed their Scottish 
neighbours so cleverly that from 1095 to 1138 
there were no more Scottish raids at all. Dur- 
ing these years of peace many Norman barons 
got into the south of Scotland, were welcomed 
and were endowed with lands by King David I. 

As regards the French business, there was Quarrels 
very little real peace between the Duke of Nor- King of 
mandy and the French King. And as the for- ^qqq^^' 
mer was now King of England also, he generally ii^'*- 
got the best of it. Until the middle of the 
twelfth century the King of France was very 
poor and could get very few people to fight for 
him, whereas Henry I once shipped a lot of 
sturdy English soldiers across the Channel and 
won a great victory at Tenchebray, 1106, over 
Norman rebels who were being aided by the 



64 WILLIAM II 

French King. As a rule, however, our kings 
fought their battles in France with foreign 
soldiers hired in Flanders. The English kings 
even had some sort of a fleet, for the "Cinque 
Ports " (Dover, Sandwich, Hythe, Romney, and 
Hastings) were obliged to furnish them a cer- 
tain number of ships every year. The causes 
of these quarrels with France are not interesting 
to us. They were usually about some frontier 
castle which the French King had grabbed or 
wanted to grab from the Duke, or the Duke 
from the King. At one of these quarrels 
William the Conqueror met his death in 1087. 
A terrible king and a terrible man he had been; 
but he had kept peace, and the fiercest baron 
had trembled before him. His one pleasure 
was hunting, and he was so greedy of it that 
he began to make a series of cruel laws against 
poachers which later kings kept up till 1217. 
It was death to kill a stag in the royal forests. 
His eldest son, Robert, was a weak, good- 
natured fellow, who had once rebelled against 
his father, and was the darling of the turbulent 
barons. So William had left Normandy to 
The Robert and England to his second son, William, 
wmiam I. who was called '' Ruf us " from his red hair. Ruf us 
William ^^^^ ^ violcut ruffiau, grasping and cruel, and 
II, called mocked at everything holy; but he was strong 
1087-1100. and clever, too, a mighty warrior and leader of 



THE FIRST CRUSADE 65 

men. He had at once to meet a fearful re- 
bellion got up by Robert, but the English free- 
holders turned out in crowds to help him, and 
he smashed the rebels and battered down their 
castles, as he battered down everything that 
came in his path. Soon he managed to grab 
Normandy also from poor Robert, who was 
always deep in debt and trouble of every sort. 

In 1096 Robert had gone to the East, and The first 
many of the turbulent French and Norman foggl^^''' 
barons with him. They had gone in order to 
fulfil one of the noblest yet vainest dreams of 
those times, to rescue the Holy Land from the 
infidel Saracens or *' Turks," who had recently 
taken Jerusalem. The Saracens bullied pil- 
grims who went thither to venerate the places 
of Christ's earthly ministry and passion. 
These expeditions from the West were called 
"Crusades," and pious adventurers went with 
them from all parts of Europe. A man who 
died upon a crusade thought that he was fairly 
sure of going straight to Heaven. This first 
Crusade was successsful and a Christian king- 
dom was set up in Jerusalem, which lasted there 
for eighty-eight years, and, in some parts of 
Palestine, for nearly two hundred years. Eu- 
rope learned much from the Crusades, and many 
luxuries, arts and crafts were brought back to it 
from the East. But the name got much abused, 



66 HENRY I 

and at last the Popes called every private quarrel 
of their own a crusade, promising their blessing 
to all who paid money to it, and scolding all 
who refused. 

A prudent yet wicked English king like Rufus 
stayed at home in spite of the Pope 's scoldings, 
and grabbed as much as he could of the property 
of his neighbours who went upon the Crusade. 
Henry I, Whcu Robert came back he found that he had 
lost another chance. Rufus had been shot in 
the year 1100, while hunting in the New Forest, 
and his youngest brother, Henry, had seized the 
crown of England. Of course Robert rebelled, 
and the great barons, both of England and Nor- 
mandy, with him. But, equally of course, 
Henry and his faithful Englishmen made short 
work of every rebellion. English chroniclers 
called Henry I the " Lion of Justice," and it was 
not a bad name for him. Though cruel and 
selfish, he was a much more respectable char- 
acter than Rufus, and he kept order splen- 
didly. He was a man of learning, which till 
then had been unusual in royal families. "An 
unlearned king," he used to say, *'is a crowned 
ass." Only one of his descendants, before the 
eighteenth century, was wholly unlearned, and 
that was Edward II, who came to a bad end. 
Henry endeared himself to his Englishmen by 
marrying the last princess of the old Saxon race, 



CIVIL WAR 67 

Edith, daughter of Queen Margaret of Scotland, 
who was the great-great-granddaughter of 
Ethelred the Unready. Among Henry's cour- 
tiers and servants we often find the names of 
EngHshmen as well as Normans, though all the 
highest places in the Church were still held 
by Normans or by men of mixed race. Well 
able to fight, and quite ready to do so when it 
was necessary, Henry, like other clever kings, 
avoided all unnecessary wars, and got on well 
with the Scottish and sometimes even with the 
French kings. 

But his only son was drowned in the wreck of Stephen 
the White Ship in crossing the Channel; and Matilda, 
when Henry died, in 1135, his heir was his only ii^^-^^- 
daughter, Matilda, whose second husband was 
Geoffrey Plantagenet, Count of Anjou in France. 
Now no woman had ever reigned in England, 
and so, when Count Stephen of Blois, son of 
William I 's daughter Adela, appeared in London 
and claimed the crown, he was welcomed as 
King, although he and most of the barons had 
already promised to uphold the claim of Ma- 
tilda. Stephen was known to be a kind-hearted 
fellow who would not rule too strictly; he was 
in fact just like his uncle Robert. 

Alas for England ! Matilda, naturally enough, civil War 
claimed her "rights, " and civil war began almost ^^^^"^^• 
at once. Nothing could have suited the barons 



68 STEPHEN 

better. They changed sides continually and 
fought now for Stephen and now for Matilda, 
as long as there was any one left to fight. "For 
The nineteen winters," says the old English chron- 
'^feUoo^e! icier, who was still writing in his monastery 
at Peterboro, "this went on." Castles sprang 
up everywhere, "full of devils," who tortured 
men for their riches, made war for sport, burned 
towns and corn crops, coined their own money 
and compelled the poor to take it in payment. 
At the end of the reign it was said there were 
over three hundred unlicensed castles in Eng- 
land. Poor Stephen did his best ; he flew hither 
and thither besieging these castles, but seldom 
had patience to take one. He and Matilda 
(who was just as bad, and a horrid female into 
the bargain) could only think of bribing the 
great barons to fight for them by heaping lands, 
riches, and offices on them; and, between the 
pair of them, the treasures of the crown of 
England were soon spent. The King of Scots, 
David I, who was Matilda's cousin, rushed in 
at the very beginning with a great army of wild 
men, and, though the Yorkshiremen gave him 
a sound thrashing at the "Battle of the Stand- 
"Battie ard," near Northallerton (1138), he stuck to 
Stand- Cumberland, and Stephen soon tried to bribe 
ard." him by giving him Northumberland also. So, 
as the old chronicler says, "it seemed to Eng- 



"BATTLE OF THE STANDARD" 69 

lishmen as if God slept and all His saints. " The 
Church alone remained a refuge for the op- 
pressed, and, naturally enough, the Church 
came out at the end of it all, not only much 
richer, but with much more power over the 
hearts of men. 

At last, in 1152, young Henry, the son of Ma- Peace 
tilda and Geoffrey, made peace at Walhngford Waifing- 
with Stephen, who was now an old and worn- *°'"'i' ii^^. 
out man. Henry was to govern England as 
chief minister while Stephen lived, and then 
to succeed to the crown. And in two years 
Stephen died and Henry II became King of 
England. 



CHAPTER IV 

HENRY II TO HENRY III, 

1154-1272: THE BEGINNINGS OF 

PARLIAMENT 

The task The young man of twenty-one whom we call 
KinVi'n Henry II came to a country absolutely wasted 
1154. with civil war. When he died, thirty -five 
years later, he left it the richest, the most peace- 
ful, the most intelligent, and most united king- 
dom in Europe. There is no misery like that 
of civil war; there have been two civil wars 
since that date, one in the fifteenth and one in 
the seventeenth century; and of course during 
these wars the country people suffered. But 
so firmly did the sense of law and order, which 
Henry II drove into his people's heads, take 
root, that there was no complete upset of civil 
life, even in these later civil wars. We cannot 
of course attribute all the later good fortune 
of the country to one man, not even to such a 
great and wise man as Henry II. His path had 
been prepared for him long before, and he was 
extraordinarily fortunate in his opportunity. 

70 



CHARACTER OF HENRY II 71 

A great revival of intelligence had already be- His fa- 
gun all over Europe, and a great revival of opportu- 
trade, no doubt largely owing to the lessons ^^^^' 
learned in the Crusades. Long-neglected books 
of Roman Law had been found, and French 
and Italian lawyers were reading them. Schools 
were increasing, and even "universities," of 
which Oxford was the first in England, were 
beginning. The towns had been gaining in 
riches in spite of the civil war; London, to which 
Henry I had given a ''charter," allowing it to 
govern itself and keep its own customs, was 
even more ahead of the other English towns 
than it is to-day. The difference of race be- 
tween Norman and Englishman was being for- 
gotten. We were growing into one "people." 
The worst followers of the worst barons had 
killed each other off during the war, or gone 
away to the Crusades. Henry had little 
difficulty in getting rid of those that remained, 
and knocking down their ramshackle castles. 

But great as the opportunity was, it would Charac- 
have been of no use if Henry had not been a very Henry ii. 
great man; one of the greatest kings who ever 
lived. His power of work, and of making other 
people work, was amazing; he seemed to have 
a hundred pairs of eyes. Laziness was to him 
the one unpardonable crime. For pomp, even 
for dignity, he cared nothing. He was cursed. 



72 HENRY II 

as all kings of his race were, with the most 
frightful temper; but he was merciful and for- 
giving when his rage was over. Norman on 
the mother's side, English on the grand- 
mother 's, he was the most French of Frenchmen 
by his father's family, the House of Anjou. 
He had just married Eleanor of Aquitaine, the 
greatest heiress in Europe, who owned all South- 
western France, from the River Loire to the 
Pyrenees. 
, His Aquitaine, or " Gascony," or "Guienne," as the 
posses- southern part of it is called, was a land of small 
and very turbulent nobles, who could never 
get enough fighting. Even Henry never suc- 
ceeded in keeping them in order. But of course, 
with all this land, and with the riches of Eng- 
land at his back, Henry ought to have been a 
much more powerful man than his "overlord," 
the King of France. Yet the truth is that all 
these different French provinces, — Normandy, 
Anjou, Maine, Touraine, Aquitaine — were rather 
a trouble than an advantage to him. They 
cost more to keep in order than they brought 
^oTln*^ in in rents and taxes, and they led to continual 
land and quarrcls, mostly about frontier castles, with the 
French King Louis VII and his successor, 
Philip II. Henry and his son, Richard I, in 
fact did well in keeping their huge loosely knit 
bundle of provinces together as long as they 



sions 

really a 

burden to 

him. 



as Law- 
giver. 



HENRY II AS LAWGIVER 73 

did. John, who succeeded Richard, lost all 
the best parts of them at once. 

For the kings of France were doing just what 
our kings were doing; they were trying to make 
all Frenchmen feel that they were one people. 
So Henry, Richard, and John were really fighting 
a losing battle in France. For the details of 
that battle I do not care two straws. Moreover, 
our sympathies ought to be on the side of the 
French kings, unless they invaded England. 

What really matters to us is what Henry was Henry ii 
doing in England. You may be sure that he 
gave no one any rest there, neither his many 
friends, nor his few foes. The greatest thing 
England owes to him is the system of Law, 
which really began in his reign, and has gone 
on being improved by skilful lawyers ever 
since. Till his reign, all the King 's servants, 
sheriffs, officers, bishops, and the rest had acted 
as judges, rent collectors, soldiers, taxing-men 
without distinction; and the King's courts 
of justice had been held wherever the King 
happened to be. But Henry picked out spe- 
cially trained men for judges, and confined them 
to the one business of judging. He chose men 
who knew some Roman Law, and who would be 
able to improve our stupid, old-fashioned cus- 
toms by its light. He swept away a great 
many of such customs, among other things the 



74 HENRY II 

fines for murder, which he treated by hanging; 
he built prisons in every county, and kept of- 
fenders in them until the judges came round 
"on circuit," as, you know, they still do four 
times a year. The judges gave these offenders 
a fair trial, in which some sort of "jury" of their 
neighbours had a hand; and if they were found 
guilty they were hanged — which surprised 
them a good deal. The King could not wholly 
put down the barons' private courts of justice, 
but he took away every shred of real power from 
them; his sheriffs, he said, were to go everywhere, 
no matter what privileges a baron might claim. 
Another splendid thing which Henry did was 
to establish one coinage for the whole country, 
stamped at his royal mint ; and woe it was to the 
man who "uttered" false coins! 
He trains As regards his army of freeholders, he com- 
pelled every man to keep arms in his house, to 
be used when the sheriff called him to battle. 
A rich landowner had to be armed in complete 
chain mail, to provide his own horses and to 
serve in the cavalry, and was called a "knight." 
But even a man who possessed the small sum 
of £6 ISs. 4}d. had to provide himself with a steel 
cap, a neck-piece of mail, and a spear; while 
every free man, in town or country, had to 
have a leather jacket, a steel cap, and a spear. 
And this " territorial army" was not only to 



the nation 
to war 



HIS QUARREL WITH BECKET 15 

fight, but to keep the peace also, to chase rogues 
and thieves, to watch at night at the town gates ; 
in fact, as we should now say, to "assist the 
police." 

As regards taxes, Henry did not demand huge His taxes, 
sums from all his subjects without distinction 
of wealth, but he sent officials round the country, 
who called together the principal inhabitants 
of each village and town, and got them to say 
what their neighbours as well as themselves 
could afford to pay. So you see, by all these 
measures. King Henry interested Ms subjects in 
the government. He made them see that they 
had duties as well as rights, a fact which the 
poorer classes of Englishmen have almost wholly 
forgotten to-day. 

But for one frightful stroke of ill-luck Henry His 
might have left an England completely united. ^^^^^ 
Hear the story of St. Thomas Becket. Thomas 

The twelfth century was the "golden age" 1164-76. 
of the Church. The aims of the popes, even 
of those popes who were most hostile to the 
growth of nations, were not entirely selfish. 
Christendom was to them one family which God 
had given them to rule. Kings were to be the 
earthly instruments of their will, to be petted 
as long as they obeyed, but scolded and even 
deposed when they did not. No king and no 
lay court of justice was to dare to touch a priest. 



76 HENRY II 

much less to hang him if he committed murder or 
theft, which too many priests still did. Henry- 
wanted to hang such priests. He was told of a 
hundred murders committed by priests in the 
first ten years of his reign which had gone un- 
punished, because the Church said all priests 
were "sacred." So he chose his favourite min- 
ister, Thomas Becket, already Chancellor of 
England, to be Archbishop of Canterbury. He 
believed that Thomas would help him to make 
one law for clergymen and laymen alike; but 
Thomas, as proud and hot-tempered a man as 
the King, had no sooner become Archbishop 
than he turned right round and supported the 
most extreme claims of the Church. He even 
went farther than the Pope, who was most 
anxious not to quarrel with Henry. "The 
Church lands," he said, "should pay no taxes; 
as for hanging priests, he would not hear of it." 
Henry was naturally furious, especially when 
Thomas went abroad and stirred up the King 
of France and the Pope against him. After a 
long and weary quarrel Henry, in a fit of passion. 
Murder of uscd somc rash words which some wicked court- 
^"nio. i^rs interpreted to mean that they were to kill 
Thomas. They slipped away secretly from the 
King's court and murdered the Archbishop in 
his own cathedral. 

Such a deed of horror was unknown since the 




n:HE, MURDER. OF BLCKET 



LAST BARONIAL REBELLION 77 

days of the heathen Danes. Thomas at once "Saint 
became both martyr and saint, even in the eyes the°"^^^ 
of those who had hated his pride while he lived, ^^rtyr." 
Men believed that miracles were worked at his 
tomb, that a touch of his bones would restore 
the dead to life. A pilgrimage to his shrine 
at Canterbury became before long the duty of 
every pious Englishman. 

But the worst result was that all the King's The last 
attempts to bring the Churchmen under the rebellion, 
law utterly failed; and the claims of the Church ^^^^"^• 
to be independent of the State actually in- 
creased for a century to come. All Henry's 
enemies also took the opportunity to jump on 
him at once. A fearful outbreak of the barons 
(who had been quiet for twenty years), both 
in England and Normandy, came to a head in 
1174, and was supported by both the French 
and Scottish kings, by Henry's own eldest son 
(a vain young fool), and by Queen Eleanor her- 
self. Henry's throne rocked and tottered; 
but, of course, all good Englishmen stood stiffly 
for their King, and, when he had knelt in pen- 
itence at Becket's tomb, and allowed the Can- 
terbury monks to give him a sound flogging 
there, he triumphed over his enemies. He took 
the King of Scots prisoner, and compelled the 
rest of the barons to sue for mercy. This mercy 
he freely gave them. No one was hanged for the 



78 HENRY II 

rebellion, and most people concerned got off 
with a fine. 
Henry His last six ycars were again disturbed by 
^LtI revolts, but not in England. Philip II was the 

1175-89. gj,g|. ^£ ^Yie really great French kings bent on 
uniting all Frenchmen; and he easily enticed, 
not only Henry's barons, but his three younger 
sons, Richard, Geoffrey and John, into rebellion. 
Henry died of a broken heart at their ingrati- 
tude in 1189. 

His visit ^^^ event of his reign must not be forgotten, 

to ^^^^l"^^ his visit to Ireland in 1171-2. St. Patrick, you 

may have heard, had banished the snakes from 

that island, but had not succeeded in banishing 

the murderers and thieves, who were worse than 

State of many snakes. In spite of some few settlements 

Ire and. ^^ Danish pirates and traders on the eastern 
coast, Ireland had remained purely Celtic and 
purely a pasture country. All wealth was reck, 
oned in cows; Rome had never set foot there, 
so there was a king for every day in the week, 
and the sole amusement of such persons was to 
drive off each other's cows, and to kill all who 
resisted. In Henry II 's time this had been 
going on for at least 700 years, and during the 
700 that have followed much the same thing 
would have been going on if the English gov- 
ernment had not occasionally interfered. 

Well, in 1168, one of these wild kings, being 



STATE OF IRELAND 79 

in more than usual trouble, came to Henry and 
asked for help. Henry said, "Oh, go and try 
some of my barons on the Welsh border; they 
are fine fighting-men. I have no objection to 
their going to help you." The Welsh border 
barons promptly went, and, of course, being 
well armed and trained, a few hundred of their 
soldiers simply drove everything before them 
in Ireland, and won, as their reward, enormous 
estates there. The King began to be anxious 
about the business, and so, in 1171, he sailed 
over to Waterford and spent half a year in Ire- 
land. The Irish kings hastened, one after 
another, to make complete submission to him; 
he confirmed his English subjects in their new 
possessions; he divided the island into counties, 
appointed sheriffs and judges for it — and then 
he went home. He had made only a half- 
conquest, which is always a bad business, and 
the English he left behind him soon became as 
wild and barbarous as the Irishmen themselves. 

Henry was succeeded in all his vast dominions Richard i, 
by his eldest surviving son, Richard I, "Richard 
the Lion Heart," "Richard Yea and Nay," so 
called because he spoke the truth. He found 
England at profound peace; his father's great 
lawyers and ministers continued to govern it 
for him until his death ten years later. He 
himself cared little for it, except for the money 



80 RICHARD I 

he could squeeze out of it to serve the two ob- 
jects which really interested him. These were 
to deliver Jerusalem, which had again been 
taken by the Saracens, and to save his foreign 
provinces from being swallowed by the French 
King. 
Richard Richard was a most gallant soldier and a born 
CnSade! leader of men in war; he was generous and for- 
quaneis ^i^iug; but of his father's really great qualities 
with he had very few. He had been spoiled as a child, 
and he remained a great, jolly, impatient child 
till his death. He and his rival. King Philip, 
at once set out on the Crusade in 1190, and 
quarrelled continually. Philip soon slipped off 
home, and began to grab Richard's French 
provinces, with the aid of the treacherous John, 
Richard's youngest brother, who had stayed 
in England. John was the one unmitigated 
scoundrel in the whole family; and he rejoiced 
greatly when he heard that his brother, who 
had failed to deliver Jerusalem, had been taken 
captive on his way home from Palestine, by the 
unscrupulous German Emperor, Henry VI. 
This royal brigand demanded an enormous 
ransom for Richard, and of course heavy taxes 
had to be raised in England to pay him. But 
it did not interrupt the good peace, and Richard, 
who forgave his wicked brother directly he was 
free, spent the rest of his short reign in France 




RICHARD I IN THE HOLY LAND 



MURDER OF PRINCE ARTHUR 81 

fighting King Philip, not altogether without 
success. He was killed at the siege of a small 
French castle in 1199. 

The proper heir to the throne was Arthur John, 
of Brittany, a mere boy, son of Henry II 's third 11%' 
son Geoffrey, who had died in 1186. But John 
was in England and seized the crown without 
much difficulty. Of course he quarrelled at once 
with his old friend Philip, and Philip knew that 
his own time and that of France had now come. 
John did, indeed, get hold of little Arthur and Murder of 
had him murdered; but then dawdled away his |™^^ 
time in small sieges and useless raids in France, about ' 
while Philip overran all John's French do- 
minions except Aquitaine with perfect ease. 

By 1205, Normandy, Maine, Touraine, Anjou, Loss of 
the inheritance of the mighty Norman and mandy, 
Angevin races, had gone to France for good, i^^^- 
And of the French possessions of England only 
the far South-west remained. 

The English barons, most of whom had owned Anger of 
lands in Normandy ever since 1066, were of barons. 
course furious with their King, especially when 
he kept on screwing enormous sums of money 
from them, calling out large armies to fight, and 
then running away without fighting. As for 
Aquitaine, none of them owned lands there, and 
they refused to defend it. John raved and 
cursed, and practised horrible cruelties on any 



82 JOHN 

enemies he could catch, and generally behaved 
in a most unkingly fashion. But in 1206 he 
John's began quite a new quarrel with the English 
with'pop^e Church and the Pope. His cause was at first 
Iii"i206- a good one, for it was about the appointment 
1^- of the Archbishop of Canterbury. Both the 
Pope and the monks at Canterbury had refused 
to accept the man whom John named as Arch- 
bishop; and the Pope had even appointed one 
Stephen Langton in his place. John swore 
"by God's teeth" that he would never receive 
Langton as Archbishop; and for five years he 
held his own. The Pope tried every weapon at 
his command; he ''excommunicated" John, that 
is to say, he cut him off from all Christian rites; 
he put England under an "interdict," which 
meant that no one could be buried with the full 
burial service, no one married in church, no 
church bells rung, and in fact all the best relig- 
ious services and sacraments were suspended. 
Finally, the Pope declared John deposed and 
told Philip to go and depose him. 

Now, much as Englishmen hated their ty- 
rannical King, they hated still more the idea 
of an Italian priest dealing thus with the crown 
and liberty of England; and most honest men 
were prepared to support even John against 
Philip and the Pope. 

John, for his part, confiscated all Church 



THE GREAT CHARTER 83 

property in Ensfland and bestowed it on a set J°^°. 

p P ■ (. ■ ' submits to 

of foreign favourites and parasites, mostly mer- the Pope, 
cenary soldiers from Flanders. Then suddenly 
he gave away his own cause. In 1213 he became 
frightened, made the most abject submission 
to the Pope, and promised to hold his crown and 
country for the future as the Pope's "vassal," 
and to pay tribute for it. This was too much for Fury of 
all Englishmen, and the country fairly boiled men.^^ " 
over with rage. -- 

Yet "rebellion" was a dreadful thing. John The 
was rich, powerful, and held all the important iead*°the 
castles of Ensjland in his own hands. The man ""f^^^^ ^f 

. . the 

who gave the English barons courage to resist Nation, 
was the very man over whom all this fuss had 1215! 
begun — Stephen Langton. He called meet- 
ings of the leading barons, and either drew up 
or got them to draw up a list of their grievances 
and those of other classes of Englishmen. This 
document was to be taken to the King and, if 
he refused to listen, the barons were to rebel. 
Nearly all the towns and most of the church- 
men were on their side; yet they were only able 
to raise a little army of 2,000 men. Luckily 
John again lost his head and agreed to all their 
demands. The document which they presented 
to him at Runny mede, near Windsor, in June, The Great 
1215, and which he signed, was called "Magna onS?. 
Charta" — the "Great Charter of Liberties." 



84 JOHN 

John soon repented of signing it, sent 
for his hirehng soldiers, sent to his "Holy 
Father," the Pope (who at once absolved him 
from his oath to observe the Charter, and 
hurled dreadful curses at the rebel barons), 
and scattered the little national army like 
chaff before him. In despair some of the 
barons took the fooHsh step of calling in Prince 
Louis of France and offering him the Enghsh 
crown. But within fifteen months England 

Death of was savcd. John, having grossly overeaten 
{aie! himself one night at Newark Abbey, died sud- 
denly in October, 1216. 

Contents If you wiU cousidcr the Great Charter for a 
Grlat few minutes you will see what a long road 

Charter, toward uuion and peace England had travelled 
since the last barons' rebellion in 1174. In that 
year the fight had been one of barons against 
King and people; now it was one of barons and 
people against King. All classes of the nation 
suffered and >had called on the barons to lead 
them. They could not have done this if the bar- 
ons had still held their lands in Normandy; and 
so it was the loss of those lands that finally made 
the barons Englishmen. 

The nation had grown up; it had "come of 
age.'* What it wanted was to make its King 
give security that he would not oppress it in 
future. So, by the Great Charter, it proposed 




KING, 30HN aiGNS THE QKEaT CHARTER^ 



THE GREAT CHARTER 85 

to "tie his hands " in several ways. He is not to 
levy any more land-taxes without calling his 
Great Council of all the great landowners 
(barons and others), and asking their consent. 
He is not to exact higher payments of rent or of 
other customary dues than earlier kings did. 
He is to pay his debts to his creditors. His 
courts of justice shall sit regularly as those of 
Henry II and Richard had sat; and they shall 
sit in a fixed place instead of rambling over 
England and France in the train of the King. 
(This "fixed place" came to be Westminster.) 
All men shall be entitled to a fair trial, and shall 
not be deprived of their land without a fair 
trial. The great abuses of the game laws shall 
be abolished. 

And so on. No doubt to many of the barons 
of this year, 1215, it was their own grievances 
of which they were thinking most — the grind- 
ing taxes, the loss of their Norman lands, their 
cruelly murdered kinsfolk. But in order to 
get these grievances redressed they were obliged 
to ask also for the redress of the grievances from 
which other classes were suffering; even "villeins" 
are carefully protected by one of the articles of 
the Charter; even to the hated Scots and Welsh 
"justice" is to be done. To the Church much 
more than justice is to be done; it is to be " made 
free," which, I fear, means that the kings are 



86 JOHN 

not to appoint its bishops. But later kings 
always found a way of avoiding this restric- 
tion. 

The Reeds of Runnymede 

^m^de" -^^ Runnymede, at Runnymede, 
June 15, What say the reeds at Runnymede? 

The lissom reeds that give and take, 
That bend so far, but never break. 
They keep the sleepy Thames awake 
With tales of John at Runnymede. 

At Runnymede, at Runnymede, 
Oh hear the reeds at Runnymede: 

"You mustn't sell, delay, deny, 

A freeman 's right or liberty. 

It wakes the stubborn Englishry, 
We saw 'em roused at Runnymede! 

"When through our ranks the Barons came. 
With little thought of praise or blame. 
But resolute to play the game. 

They lumbered up to Runnymede; 
And there they launched in solid line. 
The first attack on Right Divine — 
The curt, uncompromising ' Sign ! ' 

That settled John at Runnymede. 



CHARACTER OF HENRY IH 87 

"At Runnymede, at Runnymede, 
Your rights were won at Runnymede! 
No freeman shall be fined or bound. 

Or dispossessed of freehold ground. 
Except by lawful judgment found 
And passed upon him by his peers! — 
Forget not, after all these years. 

The Charter signed at Runnymede." 

And still when mob or monarch lays 
Too rude a hand on English ways. 
The whisper wakes, the shudder plays. 

Across the reeds at Runnymede. 
And Thames, that knows the moods of kings. 
And crowds and priests and suchlike things. 
Rolls deep and dreadful as he brings 

Their warning down from Runnymede! 

John 's heir was a boy of nine years, who was Henry 
to reign for fifty -six years as Henry III. A 72^'^^^^" 
wise Regent was quickly chosen for him, William 
Marshall, Earl of Pembroke; the French prince 
was still in the land, but his friends soon 
deserted him, and he was glad to make a treaty 
and go away. The Pope supported the new The 
government, for by John's submission the thrPopl 
young King had become his "vassal." The 
Pope expected to make a good thing out of it, 
and he intended Henry to help him, which 



88 HENRY III 

Henry, when he grew up, was only too ready to 

^f^iTen^ ^^' -^^^ ^^^ I^irigj with many good quahties, 
III- such as piety and mercy, with much learning 
and good taste for art and building, ^as quite 
un-English. He was the first king, since Ed- 
ward the Confessor, who had leaned wholly 
upon foreign favourites and despised his own 
sturdy people. He was frightfully extravagant, 
and a natural, though not an intentional, liar. 
England was to him only a very rich farm, out of 
which he could squeeze for himself and the " Holy 
Father," the Pope at Rome, cash, more cash, 
and ever more and more cash. His own share 
of it he spent on building beautiful churches, 
such as Westminster Abbey, and in useless 
wars with his noble overlord. King Louis IX of 
France, who always beat him, but allowed him 
to retain Southern Aquitaine, that is, Gascony. 
Down till about 1232 Henry governed by native 
English or Norman ministers; and, so long as 
Langton lived, the Pope did not interfere much. 

Extrava- g^t soou after that the King 's extravagance and 

gance of . . ^ i p 

Henry the Popc s lucrcasmg demands tor money began 
to be felt, and the nation grumbled. The 
barons were now thorough Englishmen, who 
had no interests outside England at all. They 
began to wonder whether Magna Charta was 
a mere bit of waste paper or not; the King 
observed few of its provisions, though he con- 



CHARACTER OF HENRY III 89 

stantly swore to observe them. In fact, he 
pubHshed it at the beginning of his reign with 
several important articles omitted. Yet it 
was difficult to catch him out. He was not in 
the least a "gory tyrant," like his father; he 
simply maddened every one by his useless ex- 
travagances, by never paying his debts, and by 
never keeping his promises. At last the barons Remon- 
found that he had promised the Pope an enor- Ifl^l^ 
mous sum of money, in return for which the ^^f^^'^s- 
Pope had promised to one of Henry's sons the 
crown of Sicily. Sicily, forsooth! What had 
England to do with an island in the Mediter- 
ranean, while French pirates were burning the 
towns on our south coast without a single King 's 
ship being sent to prevent them.^* 

This was in 1257. The barons met the King National 
in council after council and utterly refused to "IS^es. 
pay a penny for the Sicilian job. Endless doc- 
uments were drawn up for the King to sign. 
He signed them quite readily, promised what- 
ever he was asked, but never kept his word. 
The chief spokesman of the barons was one 
Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester. The ^'""'l*^^ 
nation and all the best of the churchmen rallied 
heartily to Simon's side, especially the men of 
London, and things ended in a kind of war, 
wherein, at the battle of Lewes in 1264, the 
King and his eldest son. Prince Edward, fell 



90 HENRY III 

into Earl Simon's hands. For a year Simon 
governed in the King's name; but he was a hot- 
headed and rather grasping man, and quar- 
relled with his own best supporters. He even 
P"°^^ called in the aid of the Welsh. At last Prince 

Hidward 

learns a Edward cscapcd from captivity, rallied his 
father's friends, defeated and slew Simon at 
Evesham, and put his father back on the throne. 
Little vengeance was taken; and the last seven 
years of Henry 's reign were peaceful, so peaceful 
indeed, that, though Prince Edward was away 
in Palestine when Henry died in 1272, no one 
questioned his right to be crowned king when 
he returned. 
The Two things rendered Henry's long reign 
Engind! memorable; the coming of the Friars, and the 
beginning of Parliament. The Friars were the 
last offshoot of the dying tree of monkery. , 
Wise people began to see that a monk who shut 1 
himself up in a monastery might no doubt save 
his own soul, but could do little for the souls of 
other people. What was wanted was men who 
could go about in the world preaching and doing 
good. Two great men, St. Dominic, a Span- 
iard, and St. Francis, an Italian, founded 
brotherhoods of "Friars" (the word means 
brothers), who were to fulfil this mission. It 
was a splendid idea, and St. Francis is one of the 
most beautiful figures in history. The Friars 



1 



THE FRIARS IN ENGLAND 91 

came and lodged with the very poor in the 
filthy slums, and did such work as our clergy 
are doing to-day in all great cities. Others 
walked all over the land, preaching in the streets 
and villages. But soon this movement also 
began to fail; for pious laymen heaped lands 
and riches on these brotherhoods, until in little 
more than a century they had become as rich 
and as worldly as the monks. Moreover, the 
ordinary parish and town priests, who suffered 
even more than the laymen from the greedy 
demands of the Pope, began to think of monks 
and friars alike, as mere agents of the Pope, as 
something foreign to the "national Church." 
Hence, after 1300, there were few gifts of land ^^°^^ 
to monks or friars; people preferred rather, colleges. 
to found schools and colleges. Both at Oxford 
and Cambridge colleges had been founded before 
that year. 

The second thing, the beginning of Parlia- The Germ 

, . . , , -r^ . of Parlia- 

ment, IS even more important. Jiver since ment. 

Magna Charta had been signed the idea that 

the nation ought in some way to control the 

King was in the air; and the question was what 

shape this control should take. As you know. 

Parliament to-day consists of two houses. 

Lords and Commons. The House of Lords JJ^^ 

House 01 

is a direct descendant of the barons of the Lords. 
thirteenth century. The eldest son of a baron. 



92 HENRY III 

earl, marquis, or duke inherits the right to re- 
ceive from the King a letter calling him by 
name to Parliament whenever it meets. The 
King can "create" a man a baron, and the crea- 
tion carries with it this right to receive the letter 
of summons. Perhaps there were nearly two 
hundred great barons in Henry Ill's reign; 
there are now over six hundred. The bishops 
always received a similar letter of summons, and, 
until the Reformation, so did the leading abbots. 
It was in the reign of Henry III that this Great 
Council began to take its shape. The King no 
doubt disliked it, for he disliked all control, 
and its business certainly was to control him. 
But he found that he could not do without it. 
The The origin of the House of Commons is quite 
''c^om- different. It, to-day, also has over six hundred 
mons. niembers, chosen from different towns and dis- 
tricts of the United Kingdom, by all persons 
who have the right to vote. Now, in the reign 
of Henry III, and even earlier, as I told you, 
the King had been in the habit of sending offi- 
cials into each county and town to consult with 
the chief landowners and citizens, and to dis- 
cover what amount of taxes that county or city 
could bear. These people met in the old Saxon 
court of justice, called the ''County Court," 
to which all free landowners ought to come; 
and they elected "knights" or gentlemen to 



THE FIRST PARLIAMENTS 93 , 

speak for them. In Henry Ill's reign the 
brilliant idea occurred to somebody, ^' Why not 
send these elected knights or gentlemen to meet 
the King himself in some general assembly? 
Each of them can speak for his own county, 
and the King will get a fair idea of what amount 
of money the whole of England is able to 
give him." 

Now no general assembly other than that of The first 
the Great Council of barons existed, so the menS in 
elected knights from the counties and the elected ^f H^e^f" 
citizens from the towns used occasionally to be m- 
called to the Great Council, and there met the 
barons and the King. Then there would be a 
great Talking or *'Parliamentum" (French 
parler, to talk). Such knights and citizens 
would naturally grow bolder when they found 
themselves met together, and found that the 
barons were much the same sort of fellows 
as themselves, and had the same ideas about 
the King's extravagance and his ridiculous 
foreign wars. It was on such occasions that 
they thoroughly realized that the barons were 
their natural leaders. Soon, they too would 
begin to present petitions about the grievances 
of their districts, and to beg the King to make 
particular laws. Earl Simon has got much 
fame because, while he was ruling in 1265, 
there met, for the first time, in one assembly, 



94 HENRY III 

barons, bishops, abbots, "knights of the shire," 
and citizens. You will see in the next chapter 
how Edward I shaped these assemblies into 
regular parliaments, and what powers they 
won for themselves. 

My Father's Chair. 

There are four good legs to my Father's 
Chair — 

Priest and People and Lords and Crown. 
I sit on all of 'em fair and square, 

And that is the reason it don't break down. 

I won't trust one leg, nor two, nor three. 
To carry my weight when I sit me down; 

I want all four of 'em under me — 

Priest and People and Lords and Crown. 

I sit on all four and I favour none — 

Priest, nor People, nor Lords, nor Crown — 

And I never tilt in my Chair, my son. 

And that is the reason it don't break down! 

When your time comes to sit in my Chair, 
Remember your Father's habits and rules: 

Sit on all four legs, fair and square. 

And never be tempted by one-legged stools ! 



CHAPTER V 
THE THREE EDWARDS, 1272—1377 

Edward I, II, and III (notice the grand old 
Saxon name; we are all one people now) may 
be called Edward the Lawgiver, Edward the 
Poltroon, Edward the Knight. The greatest 
of these was Edward I. 

He ranks with the half dozen greatest Edward i, 
"makers of England," with Alfred, Wilham 1272-1307. 
the Conqueror, Henry II, Henry VIII, Eliza- 
beth, and Victoria the Great. I should, indeed, 
say "makers of Britain," for it was Edward 
who planned, and almost carried out, the union 
of the whole island under one crown. It was 
he who gave the abiding shape to our Parlia- 
ment, who dealt the first successful blow to 
the pretensions of the Pope, and who first 
armed his soldiers with the all-conquering long- 
bow. His care for our coast defences was an 
example to his descendants. His legal re- 
forms were hardly less than those of Henry 
II, and at the end of his reign the law of 
England and the law courts of England had 

^ 95 



9Q EDWARD I 

taken the shape that they bore down to the 

nineteenth century. 

His Edward I was a brave, truthful, honourable 

^ ^ter] nian, of rather narrow sympathies, and could 

be very cruel to his foes. He had learned 

much from his father's muddled reign; he would 

engage in no rash foreign adventures to please 

and his tli^ Popc or any one else. Of course, he must 

task. (Jefei2(j iiis Qne foreign possession, Gascony; 

and he fortified it very strongly. Occasionally 

he was obliged to fight King Philip IV of 

France, but that was because that cunning 

gentleman was trying to swallow not only 

Gascony but also little Flanders, which was 

now the most important market for English 

wool, and also because Philip was helping 

Edward's enemies the Scots. What Edward 

himself was really set upon was the union of 

Conquest Walcs and Scotland to England. With Wales 

of VVS'lcs 

1282! he was finally successful. After two or three 
long and patient campaigns, full of painful 
marches and costly castle-building, he managed 
to shut up Llewellyn, the last "Prince of North 
Wales," in the mountainous district of Snow- 
don; and when Llewellyn was killed in a skir- 
mish, Edward organized Wales into counties, 
with regular sheriffs, judges and law courts, 
all under the English crown. From that time 
the eldest son of the King of England has 




^BDVARD i;,S WARS ^^71T11 rilE"U7SSLSH -- 
tTovD the King vsKavecl ft^e Ir^rdsKi^^ of 3\is merv 



CONQUEST OF WALES 97 

always borne the name of "Prince of Wales." 
The first Englishman to be Prince of Wales 
could at least speak no English when the title 
was given to him, for he was only a few hours 
old. But the King stained his victory by the 
cruel execution of a Welsh prince, David, who, 
after all, had only done what all Celtic princes 
had been doing for centuries, namely, promised 
to submit and then rebelled again. 

With Scotland Edward just failed, and his Attempt 
failure brought a terrible retribution on both quer 
countries. For nearly a century before this 1294-*° ' 
time Scotland had been at peace with Eng- ^^^^' 
land, and its southern half had been grow- 
ing richer and happier. Many Norman and Pros- 
English barons owned lands on both sides of Scotland 
the border and so were "vassals" of the kings ^^ward 
of both countries. Even the Scottish King I'swars. 
held a small English earldom, and for that he 
was, of course, the "vassal" of King Edward. 
But the crown of Scotland he held from God 
alone, as Edward held the crown of England. 

King Alexander III of Scotland died in 1286, Contest 
leaving an infant grand-daughter known as the Scottish 
"Maid of Norway." Edward at once pro- 1290°' 
posed to marry her to his eldest son. Nothing 
could have been better for both kingdoms, and 
all reasonable Scots would have welcomed a 
union. But in 1290 the baby queen died, and 



98 EDWARD I 

at once there was a dispute for the crown 
between several great Scottish barons. They 
appealed to Edward, and in their appeal ac- 
knowledged him to be "overlord" of Scotland. 
He gave his decision in favour of John Balliol, 
who was duly crowned at Scone as King of 
Scotland. 
Edward's Thcu, in his new capacity as overlord, 
Scotland, Edward began to bully Balliol and to treat 
^^^*' Scotland as if it were already a part of England. 
Balliol was a weak creature, and threw him- 
self into the arms of Philip of France, who saw 
a splendid opportunity of diverting Edward 
from Flanders and Gascony by aiding the 
Scots. So was founded the great alliance 
between France and Scotland which was to 
last for over two hundred years. Edward 
thereon declared Balliol deposed and sent men 
to conquer Scotland. He only succeeded in 
rousing every Scottish heart to desperate 
William resistance. Of this resistance a small land- 
owner, called William Wallace, was the first 
hero. Edward, with his mailed knights and 
his terrible archers, gave Wallace and the 
Scots a severe thrashing at Falkirk (1298), but 
he could not hunt down a whole nation in that 
wild hill country. During the nine years 
between the battle of Falkirk and Edward's 
death it became a war to the knife between the 



THE BORDER WARS 99 

two nations, which ten years before had been 
ready to lie down Hke lambs together. 

The result was that, for fifty miles on each The 
side of the border, the land became a desert, and\he 
through which swept, almost yearly, fierce ^^J^^''' 
raids from either country; and this state of i^o^- 

. . 1550 

things continued far into the sixteenth century. 
Every Scot whom Edward caught he would 
hang as a traitor (Wallace was hanged in 1305), 
which was quite a new practice in foreign or 
even in civil war, wherein there had been a 
great deal of "live and let live" on either side. 
Like other narrow and upright men, Edward 
failed to see that those who resisted him could 
be as upright as himself. Yet he was such a 
good soldier and so patient that he had very 
nearly finished off the conquest of all Southern 
Scotland when he died on his last campaign in 
1307. "Carry my bones into battle against 
them," were his last instructions, "and on my 
tomb carve 'Edward, the hammer of the 
Scots.'" But it was too late; Scotland had just Robert 
found a deliverer in Robert Bruce, a baron of King^of 
Norman descent, who was crowned at Scone fsSe^"'^' 
in 1306 as King Robert I. 

Great as a warrior and imperialist, Edward Edward 
was even greater as a lawgiver and organizer, ments. 
All his laws obtained the full sanction of the 
now regularly constituted House of Lords. 



100 EDWARD I 

The House of Commons generally met at the 
same time, and was made up of over two 
hundred borough-members and seventy-four 
Knights of the Shire. It had, at first, no 
share in the law-making, but it constantly 
petitioned in favour of particular laws. The 
clergy, after a short struggle, preferred not to 
be represented in Parliament except by their 
bishops and great abbots, who sat with the 
Lords; but Edward allowed them two assem- 
blies called "Convocations," one in the Arch- 
bishopric of Canterbury and one in that of 
York. These bodies voted taxes for the clergy 
to pay, just as Lords and Commons voted 
them for the laymen to pay. 
His Law- The House of Lords also became the chief 
law court to which you could "appeal" from 
all the three "common" law courts, which 
were now fixed at Westminster, with a sepa- 
rate staff of judges for each. In some cases, 
if you couldn't get justice anywhere else, 
you might go to the King himself, who 
would order his Chancellor to look into 
your case; and that was the beginning of the 
"Court of Chancery." The Chancellor was 
the greatest official in the kingdom and kept 
the King's "Great Seal," with which all legal 
documents must be sealed. One of the most 
useful laws which Edward made was called 



giving. 



RICHES OF ENGLAND 101 

*' Mortmain," forbidding people to leave more 
lands to the Church, which was growing a 
little too powerful. Another was the "Statute 
of Winchester," a great measure for compelling 
all men to help in keeping the peace; it created 
"police-constables" (with whom, as friends or 
foes, most boys are still familiar) in every town 
and village. Another was a law allowing the 
free sale and division of great estates of land. His heavy 
In all his laws, as in all his wars, we may say **^^^" 
that Edward, like Henry II, took his people into 
his confidence, which is the secret of good govern- 
ment. It was expensive, as all good govern- 
ment must be; and, as no one likes paying 
taxes, there was once a sort of outbreak, both 
of barons and clergy, against the expense of it. 
Edward was very angry, but he gave way and 
confirmed Magna Charta, with the additional 
promise added that he would take no taxes 
at all without consent of his full Parliament. 

He kept his promise. "Pactum serva" Riches of 
(keep troth) was his motto. Indeed the growth oi 
country was now able to bear heavy taxes. ^°°'- 
Early in the twelfth century an order of monks 
called "Cistercians" had begun to devote 
themselves to breeding sheep on a great scale, 
in order to sell wool; and England at the end 
of the thirteenth century was the greatest 
wool-growing country in the world. We did 



102 EDWARD I 

not yet know how to weave fine cloth, so our 

The wool wool was all exported to Flanders, and Parlia- 

Fiand^s^^ mcnt Said that every sack that was sent there 

should pay the King 6*. 8d. The "Flemings" 

(men of Flanders) wove the cloth and sent it 

all over Europe. This trade made it more 

important than ever for our kings to keep the 

sea clear of pirates, and Edward worked hard 

at this task. There were other rich trades 

such as that in wine with Bordeaux, and in 

furs and leather with North Germany; foreign 

merchants had to pay the King something for 

leave to come to sell and buy, for as yet there 

were very few English merchant-ships. 

Edward Edward I's quarrel with the clergy was a 

with^the ^^^y short and simple affair. The English 

Pope, Church had been long; growing more and more 

1296. o o o 

a part of the nation and less and less dependent 
on the Pope. But still the Pope was the head 
of all European churches, and had to be obeyed 
if possible. In 1296 Pope Boniface VIII 
startled the whole of Europe by absolutely 
forbidding any clergyman to pay any taxes 
to any king. It was only a few years since 
Edward had got his regular system of taxing 
the clergy comfortably arranged. He and the 
King of France rose in wrath against this 
absurd suggestion. Edward simply told his 
clergy that he would put them "out of law'* 



DEATH OF EDWARD I 103 

{i.e., withdraw all legal protection from them) 

if they obeyed the Pope; and he seized all their 

wool by way of precaution. They very soon 

gave way. The King of France went much 

further; he sent men to Italy who maltreated The decay 

the haughty Pope and the Pope died, perhaps Popes, 

in consequence of the rough handling he got. 

He put a creature of his own on the Papal 

throne, and compelled him to come and live 

in France. For seventy years this "Captivity" 

of Popes lasted (1305-78), and, as England was 

at war with France for much of that time, 

the respect of Englishmen for a French Pope 

was naturally slight. After the "Captivity" 

came the "Schism" (division) (1378-1415), J 

during which there were two and sometimes '" 

three persons each calling himself Pope. In 

fact the old Church of the Middle Ages was 

fast going down hill. 

Edward's death closes the best period of Death of 
these "Middle Ages." From that time to the 130?^ ' 
Reformation the country, except in material 
wealth, did not improve. Even the glorious 
foreign wars of Edward III brought in the long 
run more harm than good to England. 

Edward II ("the Poltroon") was a most Edward 
impossible person, heartless, ignorant, extra v- 27. 
agant, cruel, and weak-minded. Men rubbed 
their eyes and said, "Is this creature the son 



I 



104 EDWARD II 

His idle- of *Pactum scrva'?" He gave up the Scottish 
extra^4^ wai at oiice, and, when in 1314 he was obhged 
gance. ^q IslI^q ft up again, his enormous army got a 
most thorough thrashing from the Scottish 
spearmen at Bannockburn. He hung on the 
neck of a low-class Gascon favourite, who 
made fun of the sober English barons till they 
caught and killed him. Edward afterward 
The Earl took a fcarful revenge on such barons as he 
^^castS" c<^uld catch, especially on his cousin Earl 
Thomas of Lancaster. Thus began a feud 
between the Crown and this man's family 
which ended in the overthrow of Edward's 
great-grandson Richard II and eventually in 
the civil "Wars of the Roses." 
Decay of The barous grew worse as well as the King 
baronage! — for uo ouc class in a country can be bad 
1500 without the others suffering; they used the 
meetings of Parliament to carry on their quar- 
rels. Several of them were of royal descent 
(from younger sons of Henry III and Edward 
I); these had married great English heiresses, 
and began to fight each other for lands and 
earldoms. The King seemed to be at their 
mercy. At last, in 1327, a general rising, 
headed by the wicked French wife of Edward, 
„ . swept him away and set up his son, aged 13, 
tion of as Edward III. Edward II was a bad King; 
II, 1327. but his deposition and murder were a bad job, 



DEPOSITION OF EDWARD II 105 

because there had been no one great national 
grievance, only a lot of private ones of certain 
great nobles. He had wasted his life, and in 
the end was deposed for nothing in particular. 

Edward III ("the Knight"), by interesting f-.^'^fli^^^ 
these barons m his French and Scottish wars, 
where there were lands and money as well as 
glory to be gained, snuffed out their quarrels 
for nearly fifty years; but he, too, had several 
younger sons who quarrelled with each other 
after his strong hand was gone. 

He was a man of many different sides of His 
character. He loved pageants and splendour, and popu- 
but he also loved hard knocks in hard fights *" ^' 
by sea and land. He was merchant-king, sailor- 
king, soldier-king, and Parliament's king too, 
for he added greatly to the power of the 
House of Commons, which, when he died, 
had obtained a full share in all law-making, 
could call the King's ministers to account if 
it thought they were misbehaving, and, in fact, 
was almost as powerful as the House of Lords. 
It was always ready to vote Edward enormous 
sums of money. Finally, Edward thoroughly 
understood the needs of English trade, and he 
founded English manufactures; for it was he 
who invited Flemings to come from Flanders 
and settle in Norwich and teach us how to 
weave fine cloth. 



106 EDWARD III 

The great Yet Edward has a bad name in history 
war^caUed ^ecause he plunged England into that great 
the Hun- war with France which lasted off and on for 
Years' 100 ycars. In the beginning, I think, he could 
S- hardly help fighting. At the best of times 
1453. England and France were rather like two 
fierce, well-fed dogs, the doors of whose ken- 
nels looked right into each other. Edward had 
wisely begun his reign with several serious 
attempts to conquer Scotland, and had won 
Causes of ^ great battle at Halidon Hill in Berwick- 
the war. s^jre, while, all the time, French help was 
being poured into Scotland. Then, again, the 
French never ceased their attempts to eat 
up our old ally, Flanders, now more than ever 
necessary to English trade. Finally, no Eng- 
lish King of any spirit could refuse to defend 
Gascony, our one foreign possession. The war 
opened with a great English victory on the 
seas, at Sluys off the River Scheldt (1340); 
and, just before this victory, Edward had been 
persuaded by the Flemings to come to their 
Edward help on land and to take the title of "King 

claims to -^ . . . 1 

be King of of Fraucc." By English law his claim to the 
1340. French crown would have been a good one, 
because his mother was the daughter of King 
Philip IV, but French law did not recognize 
that a man could inherit a kingdom through 
his mother. However, from this time forward 



Boundary of Henry ll's possessions P°" I, 

English possess7oiTS at accession of Edward lit ^^M ^alals 
English possessions after Treaty of Bretigny \'Z(/^-SA V 

Agincout 












nl'isj^ 



FRANCE 

Engfisb Miles 

Q 20 40 ^ 80 100 




Marseilles 
[Mediterranean Sea 

Emery Walk"- so 



THE BLACK PRINCE 107 

until 1802 all English kings called themselves 
"Kings of France" and put the French Lilies 
beside the English Leopards on their Royal 
Standard. This was the most expensive piece 
of gardening on record, but the war gave the 
English a long experience in hard knocks which 
stood them in good stead. 

Edward had in him a good deal of the The 
"knight-errant," the sort of brave, reckless nation 
rider who was supposed to go about seeking h"^^^'^'^^ 
adventures, rescuing ladies in distress, and 
cutting the throats of giants. But he had 
also a rich kingdom at his back and plenty 
of fighting barons, knights, and freeholders, as 
greedy of adventure as himself. His subjects, 
in fact, urged him on and gloried in his splen- 
did series of victories. 

Perhaps you are disappointed that I am not 
going to describe any of his great battles or 
rides through France; but I had much rather 
that you learned why a King of England was 
fighting in France than the dates of the Battle Battles of 
of Crecy (1346) or Poitiers (1356). In the iS' 
open field, up to 1361, we were always vie- iSe!' ' 
torious. This was because the English leaders, 
including the King himself, his noble son 
called the "Black Prince," Chandos, Manny, Sfjf'^ 
Knollys, and many others thoroughly under- p gai- 
stood "tactics" — that is to say, they knew soldiers. 



108 EDWARD III 

how to move their men on the battlefield. 
The French used to huddle too many heavy- 
armed knights, whether on horse or foot, into 
too small a space, and trusted to crushing the 
English by mere weight of numbers. But 
it is an old saying that "the thicker the hay is, 
the more easy it is to mow it." The French 
light infantry was contemptible and was 
despised by its own knights; whereas our 
Use of the sturdy yeomen, armed with the long-bow, were 
long-bow. ^YiQ first line of every English force and could 
pour in such showers of arrows as neither 
horses nor men could face. Then our cavalry 
could charge in after the arrows had blinded 
or frightened whole battalions of the enemy. 
Capture In the course of the war Edward captured 
"^ ^1347] the great city of Calais, which, as you know, 
is right opposite Dover. He wanted, or said 
that he wanted, to hang six of the principal 
citizens of Calais, for the city had made a 
desperate resistance and cost him much trouble; 
but his good Queen Philippa begged them off. 
By the possession of Calais we got command of 
the "narrow seas" as we had never had it 
before, and Edward III might well put the 
picture of a ship on his new gold coins, to show 
that he was "Sovereign of the Seas." We held 
Calais for 200 years. After more than twenty 
years of war Flanders was free from the French, 




EDWARD 111 AT CALAIS 



PESTILENCE OF 1348-9 109 

Gascony was safe, and, though Scotland was 
as unconquered as ever, a Scottish king had 
been taken prisoner at the Battle of Neville's 
Cross near Durham (1346), and a French 
king at the Battle of Poitiers. A peace was Peace of 
concluded in 1361, which left Edward in full ^^qi^^' 
possession of all the old inheritance of Henry 
II's wife (Eleanor of Aquitaine), as well as 
of Calais. 

France had been harried from end to end; The 
but so had Northern England by the Scots. PfS.g^ 
And, though our country was gorged with 
French gold, it was by no means happy. The 
war had in fact become a war of plunder, which 
is the worst kind of war. And in 1348 a pes- 
tilence, called the Black Death, had swept off j| 
more than a third of the population of Eng- '^' 
land, which early in the century had perhaps 
reached four millions. The exceedingly dirty 
habits of our ancestors had frequently caused 
epidemics of various horrible diseases, but 
never before upon such a scale. No doubt Results of 
this plague was brought by travellers and fJncron 
goods coming from the East. All Southern [if^ and 
Europe suffered, but England perhaps worse 
than any country. The "villein" class was 
certainly diminished by one half; and so land- 
owners could no longer get their labour-rents, 
or, indeed, get their land tilled at all. Prices 



110 EDWARD III 

doubled everywhere, and the few "villeins" that 
were left demanded enormous wages for a little 
work. All the "feudal" ties which had bound 
village life together were snapped. Men began 
to wander "in search of work" from the old 
home where they had been born and where 
their ancestors had lived from earliest Saxon 
days. Landowners, finding they could get no 
reapers or threshers, began to sell their land, 
or take to sheep farming, which wants few hands. 
Parliament went on saying: "Oh, ye villeins, 
you shall work for the old wages; oh, ye land- 
owners, you shall not pay higher ones." But 
it was not a bit of good. There was a great 
deal of work to be done; there were very few 
men to do it, and those men asked and received 
higher wages. For a year or two it seemed as 
if society would come to an end. 
Last years Then, slowly, thiugs got a little better, but, 
ni'\^69^ as you shall hear, there was a fierce rebellion 
'^'^' of the peasants in the next reign. Edward 
Spanish III*s last ycars were unhappy. His son, the 
^^^'^^70' Black Prince, governed Aquitaine, and was 
beguiled by a Spanish scoundrel, called King 
Pedro, to interfere in a Spanish civil war. 
Wherever the Prince and his archers fought 
they won, but his army suffered dreadfully 
from the climate. A new King of France took 
the opportunity to renew the great war (1369) 



DEATH OF THE BLACK PRINCE 111 

His captains had been learning tactics from 
their EngHsh foes by the simple process of 
being beaten till they understood how to hit 
back, and slowly and patiently began to win 
back castles and frontier provinces in Aqui- 
taine. The Black Prince, sore stricken with Death of 
fever, turned every now and then, like a dying pHnce!''^ 
leopard, and tore his victorious foes, but in ^^'^^^ 
vain. He died in 1376; and his father. King and of 
Edward, worn out with hard battles and also 111,1377. 
with luxurious living between compaigns, 
died in the next year. The heir was little 
Richard, son of the Black Prince, aged eleven. 
Two greedy and unscrupulous uncles, John 
of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, and Thomas, 
Duke of Gloucester, were glaring at the boy 
and at each other. So the great reign closed 
in gloom and fear for the future. 




CHAPTER VI 

THE END OF THE MIDDLE AGES; 
RICHARD II TO RICHARD III, 
1377-1485. 

The As WE go on in English history each period 
century, a secms to have a character of its own. The 
""'^Tfrni! twelfth century, in spite of Stephen's reign, 
is hopeful; the thirteenth is glorious, rich, and 
fairly peaceful. In the fourteenth begins a 
decline, of which it is difficult to explain all 
the causes; both men and classes have begun 
to snarl at each other. In the fifteenth, the 
period now before us, they are going to bite 
each other; the century seems to be a failure 
all round. 
The old The nation at large was by no means rotten; 
brTaki? ^^^ men's sense of right and wrong had been 
up- corrupted by the French and Scottish wars. 
Too much fighting is as bad for men as too 
little. Also they were losing their faith in 
the Church, which had ceased to be the pro- 
tector of the poor and thought mainly of keep- 
ing its enormous riches safe. Men were soon 

Hie 



QUARRELSOME EARLS 113 

to lose their faith in the Crown as well, and 
even in the Law. In a rude state of society, 
when the barons were again becoming too rich 
and too powerful, and the Crown becoming too 
poor and too weak, the excellent system of 
government by Parliament, and even the 
excellent law courts, were of very little use; 
the barons used both for their own ends, and 
they kept armed men to enforce their views. 

In those days armies were only raised for Quarrel- 
particular campaigns, and, when peace came, g^fgand 
were disbanded; and the soldiers, who had Barons. 
perhaps been fighting for ten years in France, 
were not likely to be peaceful when they came 
home. So they used to attach themselves to 
some great lord or baron who could employ 
them in his private quarrels. The numbers of 
the barons were now very small, but each was 
proportionately more powerful; and a great 
man might perhaps hold four or five earldoms. 
The younger sons of the kings held many of 
these, and were often the worst rowdies at the 
fashionable game of " beggar-my -neighbour " 
and *'king of the castle." In my schoolboy 
days, when we were asked what we knew of any 
particular baron in the fourteenth or fifteenth 
century, we usually thought it safe to answer: 
"He was the King's uncle and was put to 
death." Most of the King's uncles and cousins 



114 RICHARD II 

were put to death, and more of them deserved 
to be. 

As regards the mere "politics" and wars of 

the hundred and eight years from the accession 

of Richard II to the death of Richard III, 

there is Httle that you need remembpr. 

Richard Richard II had many good quahties, but 

^*99fhis ^^ ^^^ ^^^^ ^^^ hot-headed; while he was a 

chaiac- ^qv his uuclcs and some four or five other 

ter. " 

great barons were always trying to rule in his 
name; when they found this difficult, they con- 
spired against him and killed his best friends. 
When he came of age they despised him be- 
cause he kept the peace with France, whereas 
they and their plundering followers had en- 
joyed the war. Richard, however, was no 
coward, and when he was not yet fifteen he had 
a fine opportunity of showing his pluck. In 
1381 the question of the wages of farm la- 
bourers, which had been so much upset by the 
Black Death in 1348, led to a fearful outbreak 
called the "Peasant Revolt" (1381) all over the 
richest lands of England. It was headed by 
The one Wat Tyler. London was occupied by the 
Revolt! rebels, and King and courtiers had to fly to 
^2^1- the Tower. Again the ship of state seemed in 
danger of foundering; but the] peasants lacked 
real leadership. Young King Richard II (he 
was then fourteen) showed the greatest pluck 




RICHARD II AND WAT TYLER 



HIS VIOLENCE 115 

Tyler was killed and the revolt was put down, 
not without a good deal of hanging. When 
that was over, men's eyes began to open to 
the fact that new conditions of life had begun. 
"Villeinage" was dead; the only labourers 
left were jree labourers, who naturally would 
bargain for the highest wages they could get. 
Also, much land had ceased to be ploughed 
and had gone back into pasture for sheep; 
for wool increased in value every year, and 
sheep need few hands to guard them. 

But for the rest of his reisjn the King was P^^ ^i^ 

" ^ _ ience m 

either chafing against his uncles and their i397. 
friends, or else planning schemes of vengeance 
against them. In 1397, after long waiting, 
he struck swiftly at the leaders of the barons, 
killing his uncle Thomas and banishing his 
cousin Henry of Lancaster (son of John of 
Gaunt, Edward Ill's third son). Then he got 
Parliament to pass certain acts which gave 
him almost absolute power, and all sober men, 
who reverenced both the Crown and the "Con- 
stitution" (which, roughly speaking, means 
government through Parliament), stood aghast 
at this. lZl\l 

In 1399 Henry of Lancaster returned, accused J-ancaster, 

_ •' ' ^ becomes 

Richard of misgovernment, deposed him, and King, 
perhaps had him murdered. He then took Henry 
the crown, and for fourteen years tried to rule 1413 



116 HENRY V 

England as King Henry IV, but without much 
success. The very barons who had aided him 
to usurp the throne said he did not reward 
them enough; they rose against him and a sort 
of civil war began in 1403 and smouldered on 
for three or four years. Henry was not a bad 
fellow personally; he was devoted to the Church, 
and the Church supported him; so did the House 
of Commons, which got much power in his 
reign. But to keep order, the first task of a 
Henry v. King, was too hard a task for him. He died 

141 ^_22 

in 1413. His son Henry V, equally devoted 
to the Church, was a much stronger and cleverer 
man; there was no civil war in his short reign. 
But this was mainly because he put all his 
energies into renewing the war with France. 
This really was wicked: whatever right 
attack oi^ Edward III might have had to the French 
^""iJiJ; crown, Henry V could have none, for he was 
not the best living heir of Edward III. The 
Earl of March was the best living heir of 
Edward III, for he was descended from Ed- 
ward's second son. King Henry V only from 
his third; but March had been quietly shoved 
aside when Henry IV seized the English crown. 
However, France was in a worse condition 
than England: her King Charles VI was mad, 
and her great nobles were tearing each other 
and their beautiful country to pieces. Henry 



BATTLE OF AGINCOURT 117 

V saw his opportunity and used it without 
mercy or remorse. He probably thought that 
such a war would at least draw away all the 
baronial rowdies and their followers from 
England, and it did. Henry set about the 
business of making war in the most practical His fleet 

*^ , -^ , and guns. 

manner. We owe him one great blessing: he 
was the first King since the Conquest who 
began to build a Royal fleet, as distinguished 
from the fleet of the Cinque Ports (which he 
also kept going); he was the first to use guns 
on a large scale, both on his ships and with his 
land army. Guns and gunpowder had been 
known before the middle of the fourteenth 
century, but so far had been little used. Their 
use explains Henry's success in his sieges in 
France, for with big guns you can batter down 
stone walls pretty quickly, whereas Edward 
III had spent eight months over the taking of 
Calais, which he only won by starving it out. 
The French towns defended themselves 
gallantly, but before his death Henry had 
managed to conquer all Normandy, and had 
even reached the River Loire. But his great Battle of 
feat was the glorious Battle of Agincourt, won f^^^^ 
against enormous odds in 1415. Finally in ^*^^- 
1420 he got hold of the poor, mad Charles VI, 
entered Paris with him and compelled him to Treaty of 

Troves 

conclude the Treaty of Troyes, by which he, 1420. 



118 HENRY V 

Henry, should succeed to the French crown 
and marry the French Princess Katharine. 

Death of Then, in the flower of his age, and leaving to 
1422.' an infant of nine months old the succession 
to both crowns, he died in 1422. 

Henry VT, There was one good "King's uncle," John, 

1422-61. . . 

The Duke Dukc of Bedford, who did his best to keep these 
fo*rd con- two crowus ou his nephew's head; but there 
^'^French ^^^^ othcr uuclcs and cousins who were not 
war. SO good. Little Henry VI grew up into a 
gentle, pious, tender-hearted man, who hated 
war, hated wicked courtiers, loved only learn- 
ing and learned men, founded the greatest 
school in the world (Eton), and shut his eyes 
to the fact that England was getting utterly 
out of hand. Bedford just managed to hold 
down Northern France (which had always 
hated the Treaty of 1420) until his own death 
Joan of in 1425; after that all Frenchmen rallied to 
their natural King, Charles VII. The noble 
French "Maid of God," Joan of Arc, came to 
lead her people and inspired them with the 
belief that God would fight for them if they 
would fight bravely for their country. She 
was just a peasant-girl of no education, but of 
beautiful life and well able to stand hardship; 
she believed that the Saints appeared to her 
and urged her to deliver France. The French i| 
soldiers came to believe it too, and she led them 




ENGL15H BKCHE.RY WIM5 AT J?^\GlNCaVB.T! 



I 



JOAN OF ARC 119 

to battle dressed in full armour and riding 
astride of a white horse. She allowed no bad 
language to be used in the army: "If you must 
swear, Marshal," she said to one of the proudest 
French nobles, "you may swear by your stick, 
but by nothing else." The English caught 
her and burned her as a witch, but she lives in 
the hearts of all good Frenchmen (and Eng- 
lishmen) as a saint and a heroine until this The 
day. Step by step the English were driven J^^Jg^^^t 
back till all Normandy, all Aquitaine were lost, of France. 

. . 1430-53. 

and in 1453 nothing remained to us but Calais. 

King Henry VI was not sorry; by this time ^nger of 
he knew how wicked his father's attack upon ^^ j. j^. 
France had been. But the fighting instinct of weakness 
Englishmen was desperately sore; defeat after vi's^""^^ 
such victories seemed unbearable. And, while ^e^™" 
the barons' quarrels round the King's tottering 
throne became shriller and shriller, there were 
but too many men in England ready to fight 
somebody, they did not much care whom so 
long as there was plunder at the end. Henry's 
wife, Margaret of Anjou, a fiery, cruel woman, 
ignored her gentle husband and governed in 
his name. She had already made herself the 
partisan of one of the two baronial factions, 
and had struck down the King's uncle, the 
Duke of Gloucester. Her favourite minister, 
the Duke of Suffolk, was actually caught and 



120 HENRY VI | 

beheaded by common sailors on board a King's 
ship as he was flying to France. What should 
we say if a lot of British sailors now caught 
and beheaded Mr. Asquith on board the 
insurrec- Dreadnouqht? In the same year, 1450, there 

tion of PPl- • • T7- 111 

Jack Cade was a leariul insurrection m Hent, led by a 
scamp called Jack Cade, who marched into 
London and beheaded several more of the King's 
ministers. Law and order were utterly at 
an end. 

The Duke The Dukc of York, who was now the best 

the House living heir of Edward III, at length took up the 
and the cudgcls agaiust the House of Lancaster. 

L^nSster^ Thcrc was civil war for some six years (1455- 
61), and battle after battle. The horror of 
it all had driven the good King, on two occa- |, 
sions, out of his mind. It was called the war 
Wars of ^^ ^^ House of York against the House of 
the Roses, Lancaster, of the "White Rose" against the 
"Red Rose"; really, it was the war of some 
dozen savage barons on one side against another 
dozen on the other. Each of them had a 
little army of archers and spearmen; each had 
perhaps the grudges of a century to pay off 
upon some rival. The war hardly affected 
the towns at all, and stopped trade very little, 
and even the country districts, except in the 
actual presence of the armies, seem to have 
suffered little. The growth of wool, at any 



EDWARD IV BECAMES KING 121 

rate, and with it the increase of riches, went 
on as fast as ever. "The King ought to put 
a sheep instead of a ship on his coins," was a 
common saying of the day. Of course the 
coasts were utterly undefended, and pirates 
of all sorts had a happy time in the Channel. 

If any line of division can be discovered in 
the country we may say roughly that the North 
and West were Lancastrian, the South and 
East (then the richest counties) Yorkist. At 
last Henry VI was deposed, Queen Margaret 
took flight and Edward, Duke of York, became 
King as Edward IV. He was a thoroughly Edward 
bad man, being cruel, vindictive and, except comes 
in warfare, lazy. But Margaret had been ^ef.' 
vindictive too, and, as regards cruelty, there 
was little to choose between the parties; after 
every battle the leaders of the vanquished 
side were put to death almost as a matter of 
course. 

But, just as Henry IV had quarrelled with TheEarf 

or WfiT*" 

the barons who had crowned him, so did Edward wick, 
IV quarrel with his "Kingmaker" and best Kiig^'^^ 
friend, the Earl of Warwick. Warwick there- ^^^^^ 
upon deposed Edward and took poor Henry 
VI, who had been an ill-used prisoner in the 
Tower of London, and put him back on the 
throne again. It was only a six months' res- tion oT" 
toration (1470-1), for Edward returned, slew uTo'l^^' 



1^2 EDWARD IV AND EDWARD V 

Warwick in battle, slew Henry's only son after 

the battle, slew all the Lancastrian leaders he 

Edward ^^^^^ catch, and finally had King Henry mur- 

IV again, dcrcd in the Tower. After this he "reigned 

1471-83. 

more fiercely than before"; he struck down his 
own brother George, Duke of Clarence; he 
employed spies, tortured his prisoners, and 
hardly called Parliament at all; he took what 
taxes he pleased from the rich. But he kept 
order very little better than Henry VI had done. 
Once he thought he would play the part of 
a "fine old English King," so he led a great 
army across to France in 1475, but there 
allowed himself to be bribed by the cunning 
Louis XI to go home again without firing a 
shot. At his death in 1483 his brother, the 
hunchback Richard, seized the crown, and 
Edward V murdcred Edward's two sons (Edward V and 

1483 • 

Richard Richard, Duke of York) in the Tower. Richard 

'^^85' III was a fierce, vigorous villain, and had, in 

two years and a half, succeeded in murdering 

a good many nobles, both of the Lancastrian 

and Yorkist parties. 

The Earl Finally, all the sober English leaders who still 
mond kept their heads began to send secret messages 

E^iand! to a famous exiled gentleman, Henry Tudor, 
Earl of Richmond, who was descended through 
his mother from the House of Lancaster, beg- 
ging him to come over from France and upset 



BATTLE OF BOSWORTH 123 

the tyrant. He was to marry Edward IV's 
daughter Ehzabeth, and thus to unite the red 
and white roses. Henry landed in South 
Wales with a very small army, which increased 
as he marched eastward. He met Kinsj 5^ttie of 

, " JtJoswortn 

Richard, defeated and slew him at Bosworth i485. 
in Leicestershire, 1485. Then he advanced 
to London and was received with joy and relief 
as King Henry VII. 

Apart from the politics and wars of this ^/^^j^^^^^^ 
dreary period there are one or two things to be Reforma- 
noticed of much greater interest for us. Every 
age is only preparation for the next, and the 
seeds of many of the great "awakenings" of 
the sixteenth century were sowed in the 
fifteenth. 

First, of the religious awakening. We had 
long been accustomed to growl at the riches of 
the Church, but, till the end of Edward Ill's 
reign, no one had questioned its spiritual 
powers. No one had doubted that priests 
could really pardon sin. Men hated the Pope, §^^g^^^^ 
but no one had yet doubted that he was the of the rich 
"Head of the Church" any more than they had Len. 
doubted that every priest performed a miracle 
every time he consecrated the Holy Sacrament. 
Few had even questioned that by payment of 
money to Rome you could buy salvation. But 
the popes, when they got back to Rome in 1415 




124 SEEDS OF THE REFORMATION 

after the great *' Schism," were Httle more 
than Itahan bishops, mainly occupied with 
wars against their neighbours. No doubt their 
bark was still terrible, but what about their 
bite? Had they, people wondered, any teeth 
left to bite with? 
„ Jo^P At the end of Edward Ill's reign the great 

Wyclif. 

English scholar, John Wyclif, began to ask 
questions about all these things, and to argue 
that the favourite doctrines of the Roman 
Church were all comparatively new, that they 
were not part of Christ's teaching, and could 
not be found in the Bible at all. He published 
an English translation of the Bible; hitherto 
men had only a Latin version of it, and the 
Church did not encourage laymen to read it. 
He also founded an order of "poor priests," 
who were to go about preaching simple 
Christianity. 
The The English bishops were absolutely terrified, 

"heresy." and the monks, abbots, and friars more terrified 
still. These had long known what greedy eyes 
laymen cast on their vast wealth. Wyclif, 
said the great churchmen, was a "heretic," 
and ought to be burned alive (he died in his 

Heretics bed all Safe in 1384). In the reigns of Henry 
IV and Henry V the clergy persuaded Parlia- 
ment to make laws saying that heretics 
should be burned alive, and many of Wyclif's 



COMING CHANGES 125 

followers, during the next hundred and twenty 
years, were actually so burned. The Church 
nicknamed them "Lollards," or babblers. 

The "State," as represented by the King 
and Parliament, somewhat unwillingly sup- 
ported the churchmen in this matter; yet on 
the whole the State considered that these 
Lollards were raising dreadful questions, and 
it would be better to crush them and not allow 
them the safety-valve of talking. The Church 
sat on the safety-valve as long as it could; but 
the steam of free thought was bubbling under- 
neath, and, once it had gathered head enough, 
would blow those that sat on the safety-valve 
sky-high into little tiny pieces. When Lol- 
lardy bursts forth again in the reign of Henry 
Vni it will be called by the better name of 
*' Protestantism." 

Other changes, too, were not far away. For Changes 
nearly a thousand years past the nations of over 
Europe had been considered as one great family ^^^^^' 
of which the Pope, and, since 800, some hazy 
German king who called himself "Roman 
Emperor," were supposed to be the two heads; 
other kings were, or ought to be, vassals of these 'I 

two. The Kings of England and France had 
never really admitted these large claims, and 
that was why England and France were ahead 
of other nations. But all these ideas were 



126 SEEDS OF THE REFORMATION 

out of date; the spirit of the Crusades was 

dead, the commercial rivalry of great nations 

Gun- had begun. Gunpowder was changing the face 

powder. " ^ ii 

ot war and was making the strongest and heav- 
Printmg. icst armour quite useless. The printing of 
books with movable type was discovered about 
1459, and, at Westminster, William Caxton 
was printing English and Latin books in the 
Dis- reign of Edward IV. In the same reign certain 
Bristol merchants were saihng far into the 
Atlantic, to discover half-mythical islands, of 
which dim stories, long forgotten, were now 
being revived and retold; they did not find 
any such islands till the reign of Henry VII 
had begun. Spaniards led by Columbus were 
the first to set foot in America in 1492; Portu- 
guese were the first to round the Cape of Good 
Hope five years later. But the idea of new 
Greek worlds to bc discovcrcd was in the air. Finally, 
the Turks had taken Constantinople in 1453, 
and its exiles, who still spoke a sort of Greek 
and possessed many manuscripts of the ancient 
Greek philosophers, came to Italy and began 
to spread the knowledge of Greek to Western 
Europe. 
Men Four things, then, were to change the face 
wake up, of the world — gunpowder, printing, geo- 
graphical discovery, and Greek. They would 
lead men first to wonder, then to reflect, and 




Here 

Ptolei^y fall of ^iJvf> ^^ 

ricH i|>iefe& <Z/ '^ 








'!'.'' 



y'-' 



^ o 




This is aMa)J of MMERfCa On<i the Wa/ to 

shewed to King H 



AN IMAGINA 



I 




Here men say 
the ma.rtv)er'5 




^e 



, ./^Ss 'These is.le> /^ -" 
'^/-"^^O^belVdo-S Demon 



AV'Hite C^ There loas here 

r---^ . BERl dn ISLE was DUTned 



''^~ ^i 



^'^t) Ice 

3 




»«n. believed It to be,^ u>hlcb an old. P)L.O"r 



lERICA, 1500 



THE HOUR BEFORE THE DAWN 127 

lastly to question — to question whether all 
the tales which the Church had been telling 
the world for a thousand years were true or 
false. Could Becket's bones really restore a 
dead man to life? Could a priest turn bread 
and wine into the actual body and blood of 
Christ? Was the world really flat and did the 
sun and moon go round it, as the Church said 
they did? Might there possibly be other 
worlds? You can understand, then, that the 
end of the fifteenth century left men rubbing 
their eyes, half awake and uneasy, but think- 
ing — thinking hard. 

The Dawn Wind 

At two o'clock in the morning if you open your The hour 

1 1 T I before the 

Window and usten, dawn. 

You will hear the feet of the Wind that is 

going to call the sun. 
And the trees in the shadow rustle and the 

trees in the moonlight glisten. 
And though it is deep, dark night, you feel 

that the night is done. 

So do the cows in the field. They graze for 
an hour and lie down. 
Dozing and chewing the cud ; or a bird in the 
ivy wakes. 



128 SEEDS OF THE REFORMATION 

Chirrups one note and is still, and the restless 
Wind strays on, 
Fidgeting far down the road, till, softly, 
the darkness breaks. 

Back comes the Wind full strength with a 
blow like an angel's wing. 
Gentle but waking the world, as he shouts: 
"The Sun! The Sun!" 
And the light floods over the fields and the birds 
begin to sing. 
And the Wind dies down in the grass. It is 
Day and his work is done. 

So when the world is asleep, and there seems 
no hope of her waking 
Out of some long, bad dream that makes 
her mutter and moan, 
Suddenly, all men arise to the noise of fetters 
breaking, 
And every one smiles at his neighbour and 
tells him his soul is his own! 



CHAPTER VII 

THE TUDORS AND THE AWAKENING 
OF ENGLAND, 1485—1603 

The King's Job 

Once on a time was a King anxious to under- 
stand 

What was the wisest thing a man could do for 
his land. 

Most of his population hurried to answer the 
question, 

Each with a long oration, each with a new sug- 
gestion. 

They interrupted his meals, he wasn't safe in 
his bed from 'em. 

They hung round his neck and heels, and at last 
His Majesty fled from 'em. 

He put on a leper's cloak (people leave lepers 
alone) , 

Out of the window he broke, and abdicated his 
throne. 

All that rapturous day, while his Court and his 
Ministers mourned him, 

129 



130 THE TUDORS 

He danced on his own highway till his own 

policemen warned him. 
Gay and cheerful he ran (lepers don't cheer 

as a rule) 
Till he found a philosopher-man teaching an 

infant school. 
The windows were open wide, the King sat 

down on the grass, 
And heard the children inside reciting "Our 

King is an ass.'* 
The King popped in his head, "Some people 

would call this treason. 
But I think you are right," he said; "will you 

kindly give me your reason .f^" 
Lepers in school are rare as kings with a leper's 

dress on. 
But the class didn't stop or stare; it calmly 

went on with the lesson: 
^^The wisest thing, we suppose, that a man can 

do for his land. 
Is the work that lies under his nose, with the 

tools that lie under his hand.^' 
The King whipped off his cloak and stood in 

his crown before 'em. 
He said : " My dear little folk. Ex ore parvulorum 
(Which is Latin for ' Children know more than 
grown-ups would credit'). 
You have shown me the road to go, and I 
propose to tread il." 



AWAKENING OF ENGLAND 131 

Back to his Kingdom he ran, and issued a 
Proclamation, 

"Let every Uving man return to his occupa- 
tion!" 

Then he explained to the mob that cheered in 
his palace and round it, 

"I've been to look for a job, and Heaven be 
praised I've found it!" 

Now we come to a very different part of The Six- 
history, the period when our own modern century; 
world began to be born. It was a dreadful ened 
stretch of years because the breaking up of ^°^^^' 
the old ideas of religion, of geography and of 
trade was accompanied by great suffering to 
many classes and by the loss of many noble 
lives of those who clung to the old ideas. Yet Struggle 

between 

it was a splendid period because of the close old and 
union and understanding between the new 
Tudor kings and their people; because Eng- 
land armed herself to face dangers from foreign 
foes so resolutely that, at the end of it, she was 
the first sea-power in the world. And it was 
a time in which England produced a series of 
really great men in every walk of life. Men's 
minds were stirred up to think, and so the men 
with the greatest minds came to the front; 

The old order changeth, giving place to new, 
And God fulfils Himself in many ways. 



132 HENRY VII 

Wyclif had done little more than prepare 
the bed in which the seed was to be sowed, 
the seed of knowledge and of the "Spirit which 
giveth life." England was, as she is still, a 
deeply conservative country; our people were 
slow at taking up new ideas, and too much in 
love with money. They wanted kings who 
would give them peace and order, knock down 
the great nobles, restrict or even abolish the 
Pope's power. But they did not at first want 
"heresy" or wish to break with the Catholic 
Church of their fathers. 
Henry Hcury VII was a King admirably suited to 
1509; Ms carry out some of these wishes. If you gave 
' him a name you would call him "Henry the 
Prudent." He did not do as did the king in 
the poem on page 129, nor did any real king 
of whom I ever heard; but Henry tried hard 
to find out what a king's real "job" should be, 
and he set to work to do it; moreover, he did 
his best to make Englishmen stop talking and 
fighting among themselves, and set them to 
work each at his own job. His claim to the 
throne was not a very good one, and his aim 
therefore was to "let sleeping dogs lie. " " Mind 
your own businesses, my dear subjects, and 
let me mind mine," was what he said to him- 
self. Plis main task was to heal the wounds 
left by the civil war; and, in a reign of twenty- 



HIS CHARACTER 133 

four years, he had almost completely healed 
them. There were at first som^e smiall insur- 
rections, after-swells of the late storm, but 
they were put down with ease. Henry called 
few parliaments and asked for little money, 
but heaped up treasure by other ways. He 
taxed rich people, though he had no legal caution- 
right to do so; he carefully nursed trade and 
manufacture; and he imposed enormous fines 
on all big men who broke his laws, especially 
his laws which forbade them to keep large 
bands of retainers who would fight their quarrels. 
His ministers and privy councillors were either 
bishops or middle-class laymen; and the Privy 
Council became almost more important than 
Parliament. He cut off few heads, but chose 
them wisely, for those he did cut off were 
the most dangerous. A great monarchy was 
growing up in Spain as well as in France; even tisioveof 
Germany was trying hard to be a united coun- 
try. Henry watched them all, and made 
numerous treaties with them, but refused to 
be led into expense or adventures; above all 
he avoided wars. With Scotland he kept firm 
peace, the first real peace since 1290, and he 
married his daughter Margaret to King James 
IV; it was the great-grandson of this marriage, 
who, as James I, finally united the two coun- 
tries in 1603. As for the Church, it also seemed 



134 HENRY VIII 

to be wrapped in profound peace; the mutter- 
ings against it were all under the surface. 

The "New Yet bcforc Henry died the "New Learning," 
founded which was to lead to the Reformation, was 
in full swing in England. Great scholars like 
John Colet and Thomas More were reading 
the Scriptures in their original Greek, and find- 
ing out how very much the Roman Church 
differed from the earliest forms of Christianity. 
The study of Greek had begun at both uni- 
versities, and English scholars were continually 
travelling to Germany and Italy. 
Henry In 1509 Henry died, and was succeeded by 
1509-47; his son Henry VIII, aged eighteen, a most 
splendid young man, of great natural cleverness 
and devoted to the New Learning, but devoted 
also to every sort of game, pleasure and extrava- 
gance. For the business of the State he at 
first cared nothing. "Oh, go and talk to my 
Cardinal Chancellor about that," he would say. His 

his foolish Chancellor was the cunning Thomas Wolsey, 
^^ganS" afterward Cardinal, Archbishop of York and 
Legate (i. e. special agent) of the Pope. Wol- 
sey got all power into his own hands and man- 
aged things badly. He allowed his master 
to waste the treasures heaped up by Henry 
VII, and, when the King called Parhaments, 
they growled at this extravagance, and refused 
to vote the huge sums for which he asked them. 



his early 
years 



WAR WITH SCOTLAND 135 

He plunged into foreign politics, and made a War witii 

PT1 '1-1^ I'l 11 Scotland, 

loolisn war with France, wmcn at once broke battle of 
the long peace with Scotland; for James IV 1513.^°* 
invaded England with a huge army, which 
was defeated by Henry's general, the Earl of 
Surrey, at Flodden Field (1513). Wolsey real- 
ized that the Church was in danger, both from 
the New Learning and from the growing out- 
cry against its riches, and he was most anxious 
to put off any open attack on it; but as for 
reform he had no plans. 

The storm broke first in Germany, where. The 
in 1517, the simple monk, Martin Luther, tion°^*' 
began by attacking some of the more scanda- fj^™*"^' 
lous abuses of the Church, and ended, a year \>^s^^s to 

" . miluence 

or two later, by declaring the Pope to be *' Anti- England, 
christ." Henry VIII professed himseK to 
be deeply shocked at this, wrote a book in 
defence of the Catholic doctrines, and forbade 
Englishmen to read Luther's books. But these 
books, and many others upon the same side, 
could not be kept out of England, and nothing 
could prevent eager young men from reading 
them. By the year 1527 there was a small 
but vigorous body of scholars in England who 
were prepared to attack the teaching of the old 
Church as well as its riches. They called The First 
themselves ""Protestants"; their enemies called tan^.^' 
them "heretics." Their main cry was for th** 



136 HENRY VIII 

Bible as the ground of all Christian teaching; 
"away with everything that cannot be found 
in the Bible." 

a^S^^ Until 1527 the Government sternly repressed 

divorce, every movement against the Pope. Then a 
purely political event caused it to turn round. 
King Henry wanted to divorce his wife Kath- 
arine, a Spanish princess, who had been the wife 
of his brother Arthur. Arthur had died in 1501. 
The Pope had allowed Henry to marry Kath- 
arine, although many people had doubted 
whether such a marriage could possibly be 
lawful. Only one child of this marriage. 
Princess Mary, born 1516, had survived, and 
Henry thought, or professed to think, that 
this was a "judgment of God" on him. Also 
he wanted to marry some one else, the Lady 

^Anne ^jmQ Bolcyu, oue of Queen Katharine's court 
ladies. He applied to the Pope for a divorce. 
Popes were in the bad habit of doing these 
little jobs to please kings; but Pope Clement 
VII would not do this. King Charles of Spain 
and Germany, called the "Emperor," was the 
nephew of Queen Katharine; he was much the 
most powerful monarch in Europe, and Clement 
Henry dared not offend him. So the Pope, and Wol- 

ciement scy for him, shifted and twisted and turned 
'^^29" and promised, but could not give the King 
of England his wishes. 



WHAT THE NATION DESIRED 137 

Suddenly, to the surprise of all his courtiers, 
of all England, of all Europe, Henry roared out, 
"Pope! What do I care for the Pope? Call 
my Parliament!" 

It was the year 1529. The King was thirty- The Par- 
eight years old, and quite unknown to his 1529-36. 
people, except from the rumours of his extra va- umon of 
gance. Suddenly he appeared before them pg°Y°*^ 
as their leader and friend, prepared to do all, 
and more than all, on which their hearts were 
set. The nation had hardly dared to whisper 
its desire to curb the Pope and the Church; 
here was a King who shouted it aloud ! 

Do not think that I praise Henry VIII. It 
was a selfish and wicked motive that started 
the idea in his mind. What I say is that, 
once the idea was started, he would have all 
the Kings of Europe against him, and no 
friend but his own people; and so King and 
people now became one as they had never been 
before. 

Very few Englishmen were as yet prepared what the 
to accept any new sort of Church; most of Sed. 
them hated the idea of "heresy." Henry 
hated it also, and continued to the end of his 
life to burn a few extreme heretics. King 
and people wished no more than to abolish 
the power of the Pope in England, to strip 
the Church of its enormous wealth, and yet 



138 HENRY VIII 

to remain "good Catholics." Was this pos- 
sible? History was to prove that it was not; 
once the Pope was pulled down in England a 
"Reformation" of all the Church in England 
must follow, in spite of any effort to prevent 
* it. Henry just managed to stave off this 
reformation while he lived. 
The Laws 'pjjg Parliament of 1529 sat for seven years 

against , *' 

the Pope, and when it rose a new England had begun. 

1529-36 . 

How the new laws against the Church were 
forced through the House of Lords no one knows ; 
one fears it was by terror and threats, for 
nearly all the bishops and certainly all the ab- 
bots would be against them; and of the forty- 
five lay peers, a strong minority must have 
hated serious changes. But the House of 
Commons, almost to a man, welcomed these 
changes; and that House then represented the 
sober country gentlemen and the sober mer- 
chants of England. 

One by one all the powers of the Pope were 
shorn away, the power of making laws for them- 
selves was taken from the clergy, the Church 
was declared to be independent of any foreign 
influence, but wholly dependent on the Crown. 
Every one was obliged to swear that the King 
was the "Head of the Church." The new 
btsho" Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer, 
Cranmer. prououuccd thc divorcc from Katharine, and 



MONASTERIES DISSOLVED 139 

married his King to Anne Boleyn; the Princess 
Mary was set aside, and when Anne's daughter, 
the Princess EHzabeth, was born, she was 
declared heir to the throne. All the smaller ., 

Monas- 

monasteries were dissolved and their lands teries 
handed over to the Crown; Henry gave most 
of them to his courtiers and to important 
country gentlemen, and so a new set of nobles, 
newly enriched from Church lands and entirely 
dependent on the King, rapidly came to the 
front. 

Many of the best men in England were JJ^™*^ 
deeply shocked at these changes, even some well; 
who had been prepared to go a long way in re- measures 
forming the abuses of the Church. But Henry tfg^^ij 
and his savage minister, Thomas Cromwell, Church 

, . . and the 

struck down every one who stood m their old 
path. The Courtenays and Poles, descended 
from Edward IV, were imprisoned, or driven 
into exile, or had their heads cut off. Sir 
Thomas More, once the King's intimate friend, 
and Bishop Fisher of Rochester, both men of 
European fame for their learning and piety, 
were the most distinguished victims. In the 
North of England, in 1536, a fierce insurrection Pilgrim- 
broke out called the "Pilgrimage of Grace"; ^race, 
the rebels cried out for the restoration of the ^^^^' 
monasteries, for in that wild country the monks 
had been the only doctors and their houses 



140 HENRY Vni 

had been open to all travellers. The rising 
was put down with great cruelty, for Henry 
was naturally a cruel man, and he was now 
drunk with pride and power. 
^Prhice ^^ ^^^ already beheaded his second wife, 
Edward, Auuc, and married his third, Jane Seymour: 

1537. . . «/ 5 

she bore to him in 1537 a son, afterward 
Edward VI, and died a few days afterward. 
In the last seven years of his life he married 
three more wives, one of whom he divorced, 
another he beheaded, and the third survived 
him. 

^\°nd^ In 1539 the remaining monasteries, even 
owners, the greatest, were dissolved and, as a result, 
the great abbots ceased to attend Parliament. 
Some of their wealth was used to found schools 
and professorships at Oxford and Cambridge 
and to create six new bishoprics; but most of 
it went to the nobles and gentlemen. Thus, 
within three years, nearly a quarter of the land 
of England had got new owners. All the great 
offices of state had been wholly taken away 
from churchmen, and were now in the hands 

The Con- of thcsc ucw uoblcs. Ncw " Conf cssious of 

IGSSIOIIS 

of Faith. Faith" (declaring what was the true teaching 
of the Church of England) were published; 
first the "Ten Articles, " then the " Six Articles"; 
the former was a step in the direction of the 
German Protestantism; the latter was very 




ijOW >iE:NR.Y^/lll HAD THE. MQ>at<S TvjKMI-ID OUT OFTMe f^ONASTER!IE..S 



THE ENGLISH BIBLE 141 

neany the old Catholic faith but without the 
Pope; and I must repeat that it was this mid- 
way position which, as late as Henry's own 
death, most people in England preferred. 

But Henry had ordered an English trans- Jhe 
lation of the Bible to be placed in every parish Bible, 
church for every one to read, and in 1544 
he allowed the Litany to be said in English; 
this was really the beginning of our beloved 
Prayer Book. And, once lay Englishmen began 
to read the Bible for themselves, they would 
not long be content to believe in confession 
to a priest or in the miracle of the Mass (both 
of which were taught in the Six Articles). 

Now all these changes were carried through Danger of 
under continued danger from abroad, for of invasion 
course the Pope had declared Henry to be de- o?the 
posed, and called on all Catholic princes to go ^°p®' 
and depose him. Much of the danger was 
from the old alliance of France and Scotland, 
but far more from the power of Spain, Germany, 
and Flanders, now all in the hands of the. 
Emperor, Charles V. Threats of invasion were 
incessant, but Henry armed his people to the Henry 
teeth, and, at the end of his reign, had a navy p™pie/^ 
of seventy ships ready for action. He built 
castles all round his southern and eastern coasts, 
and was always making great guns to put in 
them. He knew that the few remaining de- 



142 HENRY VIII 

scendants of Edward III were plotting to upset 
his throne, especially the exiled Reginald Pole, 
a great favourite of the Pope. He had already 
sliced off the heads of all his royal cousins 
whom he could catch. With the approval of 
sh^w ^^^ Parliament, he had settled that the crown 
succeed sliould go after his death to his son Edward; 

Henry? 

if Edward had no children, to Mary; then, 
if Mary had no children, to Elizabeth; lastly, 
if all three of his children died without direct 
heirs, it was to go to the heirs of his younger 
sister, Mary, Duchess of Suffolk, not to those 
of his elder sister, Margaret, Queen of Scot- 
land. He hated Scotland as bitterly as Edward 
I, and continued the Border wars as fiercely 
until his death in 1547. 
Henry's Thus you wiU Say I have drawn for you the 
ter. picture of a monster of cruelty and selfishness? 
Yes, Henry was just that. But he was also 
something much more. He was a great patriot, 
a great Englishman. He taught Englishmen 
to rely on themselves and their ships; and 
he taught future English kings to rely on their 
people. He shivered in pieces the foreign yoke 
that had bound the Church of England since 
Saint Augustine had preached in the open air 
Sufferings to the early Kings of Kent. Great suffering | 
Vor! accompanied these great changes; and they 
were thoroughly bad for the moral character 



THE HENRY GRACE A D)BV 
caltecL THE^QREAT HARRV^s 
HENR'^'i>-^blCG|EST^3HIP^^ > 




|H£NRY Vlll -SEELS THAT E.NGLAND HAS A GOOD FLEET- I 



GREED OF THE RICH 143 

of the generation which saw them. The new 
landowners were men who thought only of 
riches, and turned out the tenants of the old 
monks by the score, and by the hundred. A 
swarm of beggars were let loose over the coun- 
try, beggars to whom the monks had given 
daily doles of bread and beer. Savage laws 
of whipping and forced labour had to be passed 
to keep these men in order. Moreover, since ^^^^ 
the discovery by the Spaniards of rich gold and rich. 
silver mines in America, money had come into 
Europe in great floods and this had sent up 
the price of all goods at a fearful rate; all 
trade seemed uncertain; great fortunes might 
be suddenly made, and as suddenly lost. So 
the strong and the clever (and often the wicked) 
prospered, and the weak and the old-fashioned 
people were ruined. 

The six years' reign of the boy Edward VI v?T547- 
(1547 — 53) only made all this social misery worse. 53.' 
Every one had been afraid of Henry VIII; 
no one was afraid of a child of ten, though he Scramble 
was a clever and strong-willed child. The new 
result was that the government became a scram- riche?Ind 
ble for wealth and power among the new nobles, power, 
the Seymours, Dudleys, Russells, Herberts, 
Greys, and many more who had been enriched 
with abbey lands. It was the fear of losing 
these lands and the desire of confiscating for 



144 EDWARD VI 

themselves what remained of Church property 
that drove these men, quite against the wishes 
of sober people, to force on a reformation of 
They de- the teaching of the Church. The result in the 
Reforma- loug ruu was good, bccausc the Protestant 
^^°^' faith did then first get a lawful footing in 
England; but the result for the moment was 
bad, because moderate men began to mistrust 
a Reformation which seemed to be bound up 
with greed for spoil and with contempt for 
all the past traditions of England. At the 
same time the leaders of the new Protestant 
Church were all men of high character. Cran- 
mer, Ridley, Latimer, and Hooper, all bishops 
of King Edward, all died for their faith in the 
next reign. 
The two However much we may rightly abuse the 
BookTof greedy nobles, we can never wholly regret 
^^mo ^ reign which first gave us the Prayer Book in 
and 1552. English and substituted the Communion for 
the Mass. Cranmer prepared two successive 
Prayer Books, the second (1552) somewhat 
more Protestant than the first of 1549, and 
it was the second which, with very slight alter- 
ations, became our present Prayer Book in 
the reign of Elizabeth. In Edward's reign 
also the marriage of priests was allowed, and 
the laws about burning heretics were abolished. 
In his reign too, alas, the beautiful stained- 



QUARREL WITH SCOTLAND 145 

glass windows, statues and pictures were re- 
moved from most of our churches, whose walls 
were now covered with whitewash. 

Edward's first Regent or "Protector" was 
his mother's brother, Edward Seymour, Duke of The Duke 

. oi bomer- 

Somerset; a man of much higher character set, Pro- 
than most of the nobles, but rash and hot- 
headed, and quite unfit to lead the nation. 
He continued Henry's vindictive quarrel with ^^^ , 

. . , . , quarrel 

Scotland, won a great victory at Pinkie, and withScot- 
drove the Scots once more into the arms of 1548. 
France. Their girl-queen, Mary Stuart, who 
might have been a bride for our boy -king, was 
sent for safety to France and married to the 
French King's son. Somerset was soon upset 
by a much more violent person, the ruffian ^i^^^jf® 
John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, who umber- 
pushed on the Reformation at greater speed 1550-53. 
for purely selfish ends, and disgusted all sober 
men with it. He brought in a lot of foreign 
Protestants and gave them places in the violence 
English Church; he brought in foreign troops formers. 
to be his bodyguard, bullied the Princess 
Mary (who was the natural head of the Catholic 
party), thrust all the leading Catholics into 
prison, and tossed the remaining Church lands 
to his fellow nobles. 

But Edward, who had always been very Edward 

VI, very 

delicate, began early in 1553 to draw near his m. 



His death 
1553. 



146 MARY I 

end. Mary's succession was sure, and, though 
no one knew exactly what line she would take 
in religious matters, it was certain that she 
would stop the violent progress of the Refor- 
mation, and quite certain that she would kill 
Northumberland. So the Duke persuaded the 
dying boy-king, now sixteen, to make a will, 
passing over both his sisters, and leaving the 
^Mie crown to his cousin. Lady Jane Grey, heiress 
of the Suffolk line and recently-married to one 
of Northumberland's sons. When Edward died 
in July, Jane was actually proclaimed Queen in 
London. 

But not a cheer was raised by the crowd, 
and the whole nation rose as one man for the 
injured Princess Mary. Within nine days Jane 
was a prisoner in the Tower, where a few months 
afterward she was executed, and Mary rode 
into London with her sister Elizabeth at her 
side. 
Mary I, Mary's reign of five years and four months 
her char- is the greatest tragedy in our history. She 
was a good woman, passionately attached to 
the Catholic faith and to the memory of her 
mother. She was learned, clever and of lofty 
courage. But she was a Spaniard at heart and 
never an Englishwoman. Like a Spaniard 
she was vindictive, and, unfortunately, she had 
deep wrongs to avenge. 



HER MARRIAGE 147 

Yet, if Protestantism were to triumph in J^^ % 

p 1 p p 1 1 formation 

the long run, something of the fearful cruelty in danger, 
she was going to inflict upon it was necessary; 
for moderate men had hitherto mainly seen it 
as the religion of a gang of selfish nobles seeking 
to divide all the riches of England among 
themselves. Nine tenths of England preferred 
anything — almost the Pope — to North- 
umberland and his land-grabbing crew. At 
the least, they wanted a return to the state of 
things at the end of Henry's reign. "No for- 
eigners," was the cry; "England and English 
Church for the English." 

But Mary cared little for her countrymen, ^^^ h° 
cared only for her Church; she was determined woman; 
to restore the state of things which had existed riage to 
at the beginning, not at the end, of her father's gp^^^P °^ 
reign; to restore the Pope and all his works, 
and to do this by making the closest alliance 
with the Emperor Charles and his son Philip, 
whom she determined, against all good advice, 
to marry. In six months she had terrified her 
people; in two years she had completely lost 
their hearts; in six years she had wrecked for- 
ever the Catholic faith in the minds of intelli- 
gent Englishmen. 

She hurled all the leaders of the Reformed Catholic 
Church into prison at once, and set about re- up again. 
establishing the Catholic services everywhere. 



"^ 



148 MARY I 

The greedy nobles, one and all, now professed 
themselves to be good Catholics, and them 
she dared not touch. The one thing they feared 
was to lose their new grants of the abbey lands. 
They knew the Queen was bent upon restoring 
the monasteries, and the laws for burning 
heretics, which had been abolished in the 
reign of Edward VI; but she was not able to 
persuade her Parliaments to do the latter until 
the end of 1554, and the lands she was never 
able to touch at all. But Reginald Pole, long 
an exile and now a Cardinal, came over as 
"Legate" of the Pope, and in the Pope's name 
absolved England from the guilt of heresy. 
Mary had already been married to Prince 
Philip of Spain. 
The Pro- The burnings of the Protestant martyrs be- 
martyrs, gau early in 1555, and in less than three 
1555-8. ygg^j,g nearly three hundred persons were 
burned at the stake. The burnings were 
nearly all in the south-eastern counties, which 
shows us that Protestantism had got the 
strongest hold on what were then the richest 
and most intelligent parts of England; the 
north and west long remained Catholic. The 
four great Protestant bishops, Cranmer, Rid- 
ley, Latimer and Hooper, were among the 
victims ; but three fourths of these victims were 
persons in quite humble life. The people 




WILLIAM I AT HASTINGS 



DEATH OF MARY 149 

of those days were well used to look on at 
all sorts of cruel tortures at executions, and 
were quite unfeeling on the subject; but the 
high courage with which these martyrs met 
their terrible deaths made an impression that 
has never been forgotten. So it was the reign 
of "Bloody Mary," not that of Edward VI, 
that was the true birthday of Protestanism in 
England. 

And no great Englishman approved of the j\ •^?,»°' 
burnings ; it was only the Spanish councillors hatred of 
and the Queen herself who urged them on. men for 
It was felt to be "a foreigners' job," and the ^^™" 
hatred for Spain and all its works soon came to 
outweigh the old hatred for France. 

This hatred became much more fierce when Loss of 
Philip dragged England into one of his frequent i558. ' 
wars with France, and when the cunning 
Frenchmen seized the opportunity to make a 
spring upon Calais (which we had held since 
Edward III), and captured it. The loss of 
Calais seemed an indelible shame. All the 
last two years of Mary's reign revolts were 
on the point of breaking out. French ships 
full of English Protestant exiles prowled in 
the Channel and harried Spanish and English 
trade. No heir was born to the throne, though 
Mary, who was slowly dying of dropsy, kept ^^^*^°^ 
hoping for a baby. Philip showed her no love ubs.' 



150 ELIZABETH 

and little civility. Her reign had been a night- 
mare of terror, and it closed amid loss, ruin, 
pestilence, and famine. 
Elizabeth, The Princcss Elizabeth, who then came to 
1603" the throne in November 1558, was a very 
different person to her sister. Her life had 
been several times in great danger during 
Mary's reign, and the Spanish councillors had 

charaT- oftcu urgcd Mary to put her to death. She 
^^^' was a woman of the most strangely varied 
character; extraordinarily stingy and mean, 
extraordinarily brave and fierce (not cruel); 
passionately fond of her country, and English 
to the backbone; so jealous that she could not 
bear her courtiers to look at another woman; 
so vain of her beauty that even in old age she 
covered herself with gorgeous dresses and ridic- 
ulous jewels; by turns a scold, a flirt, a cheat 
and a heroine. But, somehow or other, she 
made her people follow, obey, and worship her, 
till at last she became a sort of crowned spirit 
and guardian angel of the whole nation, which 
felt that it had grown to full manhood and 

'Giori- power under her protecting care. Men called 

ana. -t a r^i ■„ 'j 

her Cjrloriana. 

Her position and that of her people was, at 
Her dan- J^er acccssiou, ouc of great danger. England 

ger and . . , 

that of was entirely without allies, and, owing to the 
.ng an . |_^^^ management of the two last reigns, almost 



MARY STUART 151 

bankrupt. Catholic Europe and many Cath- 
olics in England considered that the Queen 
had no right to the throne, for they had never 
approved of her father's marriage to Anne Mary 
Boleyn. The true Queen of England, they Que^/n'of 
thought, was Mary Queen of Scots. So thought ®^°*^- 
that young and beautiful lady herself, and, in 
Elizabeth's first year, Mary became Queen of 
France as well. Indeed, the prospect of the 
union of France, Scotland, and England in one 
hand thoroughly frightened King Philip of 
Spain, and made him for many years more 
friend than foe to Elizabeth. 

He, therefore, in 1558, implored Elizabeth The 
to keep England Catholic and to marry some settle- 
decent Catholic Prince. But her sister's reign England. 
had killed Catholicism in the hearts of all the 
best and most vigorous of the younger men in 
England; she knew this, and so, though she 
dreaded the extreme Protestants and loved the 
gorgeous services of the old Church, she rightly 
decided that she must reign as a Protestant 
Queen. Yet the difficulties of settling the new 
Church were enormous ; she had to make bishops tant 
of men who had fled abroad to escape death; ^"®^^- 
and many of the most eager Protestants now 
objected to bishops altogether, while many 
more disliked even the very moderate services 
of the Prayer Book of 1552. Such men were 



152 ELIZABETH 

the germ of the party soon to be called "Pur- 
itans," and, in later days, "Dissenters" or 
"Nonconformists." Moderation, then, was the 
Queen's watchword; to build up a Church which 
should offend as few and please as many as 
possible. Her great adviser for forty years 
William was the wise William Cecil, afterward Lord 
Lord Burghley, the most far-seeing and moderate 
urg ey. ^^ jxien. And the Queen and Cecil and their 
Parliament had, in five years — say by 1563 — 
built the Church upon such broad foundations 
that it has remained, with few changes, our 
own "Church of England" until this day. 
Laws were passed in Parliament making Eliza- 
The beth "Supreme Governor" of this Church, 
Book! making the Prayer Book (very slightly altered 
r^^ from the edition of 1552) the only lawful 
Thirty- scrvicc book, and publishing the present 
Articles. "Thirty -nine Articles" as the Confession of 
Faith. Year by year more and more people 
rallied to this Church, and Parliament was 
able to pass stronger and stronger laws against 
those who refused to conform to it, whether 
Catholics or Puritans. 
Plots All her reign, but especially for the first 
^^^The twenty-eight- years of it, the Queen was in 
^"^i5e^ constant danger of being murdered by some 
extreme Catholic agent of the Pope. Such 
men called her "heretic, " "bastard," "usurper," 



HER STINGINESS 153 

and other ugly names. There was plot after 
plot, and the Catholics, perhaps not unnatur- 
ally, considered the traitors who were executed 
for these plots to be martyrs, not murderers. 
But, as each plot failed, the main result was to 
drive all moderate Catholics into the English 
Church; for most of them, much as they had 
deplored the "heresy" of their Queen, were 
patriots at heart. 

Elizabeth hated war, partly because she had stingi- 
a shrewd idea that England was hardly strong of the 
or rich enough to engage in a great foreign ^"^®^- 
war, but still more because she simply couldn't 
bear to pay her soldiers and sailors. In fact, 
she expected her subjects to fight her battles 
for her by taking service with rebellious Scot- She helps 
tish, French or Spanish subjects, while she toTSr 
pretended to be at peace with the sovereigns g^cretiy. 
of those countries. But she was often obliged 
to send small and almost secret expeditions 
to help these rebels. Philip of Spain, for 
instance, was engaged in a long and desperate 
attempt to suppress Protestantism in the 
"Low Countries" (the modern Belgium and 
Holland) , and our Queen was constantly sending 
aid to the Protestants there, though never 
openly till 1585, by which time the "Dutch The 
Republic" had been born there, and had 
become the most valuable ally of England. 



154 ELIZABETH 

It was the same story in France, where a strong 
Protestant party, continually fed by under- 
hand help from England, kept up a civil war 
for thirty years. All this weakened the two 
great Catholic powers, and made Elizabeth 
stand out more and more as the Champion 
of European Protestantism. 

On the whole, however, her reign is mainly 
occupied with two long duels, that with Mary, 
Queen of Scots, 1560-87, and that with Philip 
of Spain, which began to be severe about 1570 
and lasted till her death. 
The long The bcautiful Mary Stuart returned, a wid- 

rivalry 

withMary owcd Quccu, to Scotland in 1561 to find that 

Elizabeth had already helped the Scottish nobles 

to overthrow the French power and the Catholic 

Church at one blow. The new Church that was 

The Re- then Set up in Scotland was called the " Presbyte- 

in Scot- rian" from its government by "presbyters" or 

elders instead of bishops, and was far more 

violently Protestant than ours. This is important 

^ The ^Q remember because, to those English Puritans 

Enghsh . . ^ 

Puritans, who Wanted to abolish bishops and the Prayer 
Book in our own Church, the example of Scot- 
land was always present. Mary was a clever 
woman, but quite without principles, and far 
more reckless than her English rival. She 
honestly believed herself to be rightful Queen 
of England, but she found it hard work to keep 



FLIGHT OF MARY 155 

her own crown, and in six years she had lost 
it. For she was always an object of suspicion 
to the Scottish nobles, both as a Catholic and 
as a Frenchwoman at heart. She married her 
cousin. Lord Darnley, in 1565, and bore him 
a son, who afterward, as James I, united the 
two crowns of Britain. Then, in 1567, Mary Flight of 
allowed her husband to be murdered and England, 
married his murderer, the Earl of Bothwell. 
Scotland rose in wrath, deposed and imprisoned 
her, crowned her baby son, and had him 
brought up as a Protestant King. A year 
later Mary escaped from prison and fled to 
England, demanding aid from her rival 
EHzabeth. 

That clever lady pretended to pity Mary, Mary in 

, , , „ „ „ custody in 

but kept her sate, at nrst as a sort oi guest, England; 
soon as a prisoner for nineteen dreary years. ^"^ p " ^• 
No wonder that Mary soon began to plot 
against Elizabeth's life, and to implore the 
aid of every Catholic power in Europe. The 
one insurrection of Elizabeth's reign, that of 
the North of England in 1569, was got up in 
order to put Mary on the throne. At last. Her trial 
in despair, Elizabeth's wisest councillors im- i587. 
plored her to bring Mary to trial; and in 1587, 
the Scottish Queen was tried, condemned and 
beheaded in Fotheringay Castle. Spain win 

This was an open challenge on the part of her."^^ 



156 ELIZABETH 

England to Catholic Europe. Mary had made 
a will in which she passed over her son, left 
Philip of Spain heir to both her crowns and 
implored him to avenge her. He was ready to 
do so, for he had long been tired of Elizabeth's 
secret aid to his rebels, and exasperated at the 
failure of the plotters to kill the English Queen. 
So he prepared to send against us a great fleet, 
known to history as the "Spanish Armada." 
EnS ^^^ Henry VII and Henry VIII had been 
Nlvy, the real makers of the English navy, for they 
had been the first kings to build big ships which 
could sail anywhere and fight anybody. And 
Henry VIII had paid very special attention 
to guns and gunnery. He had also been the 
true father of English merchant shipping, and 
had encouraged his subjects to trade to distant 
andEng- parts of the world. All merchant -ships in 

lisn mer- ^ • i p 

chant- those days carried guns, for they always had 
^ ^^^' to be ready for a tussle with pirates. So, 
though the Spanish fleet was perhaps twice 
as numerous as the English Royal navy, the 
number of fighting ships that England could 
put to sea far out-numbered those that Spain 
could send into the Channel. And our men 
were going to fight, not only for Queen and 
faith, but for home and wives and children; 
to fight, too, on their own shores, every tide and 
shoal of which was well known to them. 



ENGLISH SAILORS 157 

When Spain had discovered America and Spanish 

America; 

the Portuguese had found the way round the Portu- 
Cape of Good Hope to India, each tried to fndk. 
exclude all other nations from the seas they 
had explored, from the lands they had dis- 
covered, and from the trades they had opened 
up. And a Pope had had the astounding in- 
solence to divide these seas, countries, and 
trades between the Spaniards and Portuguese, 
giving the Western World to Spain, the Eastern 
to Portugal. Englishmen, when they abolished English 
the Pope, naturally laughed at this exclusion; America. 
they meant to take, and did take, English goods 
to all countries where they could find a market 
for them, and this rough, deep-sea game went on 
all through the reigns of Edward and Mary. 
In the reign of Elizabeth it became the game of 
Englishmen. You can imagine some simple 
English sailor lad, who had perhaps never done 
more than a few coasting voyages from one 
little port of Devon to another, opening his 
eyes to the wonders of the Tropics as he sails 
in Francis Drake's great voyage in the Golden Drake's 

° ^ t^ o voyage 

Hind across the Atlantic, across the Equator, round the 
south and ever south till the Strait of Magellan 1577-80. 
opens the door into the Pacific; then north 
again, picking up here and there some rich 
Spanish merchant-ship as a prize; then across 
through innumerable spice islands to the Indian 



158 ELIZABETH 

Ocean, and so round tlie Cape of Good Hope 
and home; home to his own wind-swept Channel 
and the white cHffs by Plymouth. This was 
in 1580 — the first English voyage round the 
World, the third only of such voyages in re- 
corded history; honour to Sir Francis Drake! 

With Drake in the Tropics 

South and far south below the Line, 

Our Admiral leads us on. 
Above, undreamed-of planets shine — 

The stars we knew are gone. 
Around, our clustered seamen mark 

The silent deep ablaze 
With fires, through which the far-down shark 

Shoots glimmering on his ways. 

The sultry tropic breezes fail 

That plagued us all day through; 
Like molten silver hangs our sail. 

Our decks are dark with dew. 
Now the rank moon commands the sky. 

Ho! Bid the watch beware 
And rouse all sleeping men that lie 

Unsheltered in her glare. 

How long the time 'twixt bell and bell ! 
How still our Ian thorns burn! 




WITH DRAKE IN THE TROPICS 



WITH DRAKE IN THE TROPICS 159 

How strange our whispered words that tell 

Of England and return! 
Old towns, old streets, old friends, old loves, 

We name them each to each. 
While the lit face of Heaven removes 

Them farther from our reach. 

Now is the utmost ebb of night 

W^hen mind and body sink. 
And loneliness and gathering fright 

O'erwhelm us, if we think — 
Yet, look, where in his room apart. 

All windows opened wide, 
Our Admiral thrusts away the chart 

And comes to walk outside. 

Kindly, from man to man he goes. 

With comfort, praise, or jest. 
Quick to suspect our childish woes. 

Our terror and unrest. 
It is as though the sun should shine — 

Our midnight fears are gone! 
South and far south below the Line, 

Our Admiral leads us on ! 

Drake, Hawkins, Raleigh, Grenville, Caven- 
dish and a hundred more of gallant English 
merchants and sailors pushed their ships and 
their trade into every corner of Spanish America; 



160 ELIZABETH 

and of course the Spaniards hanged many of 
them as pirates and burned others as heretics. 
Remonstrances to the English Queen were of 
little use, for she was often able to reply to 
Philip, "Then why is your Majesty encourag- 
ing plots against my life and helping my rebels 
in Ireland?" 
The Philip had, in fact, delayed his attack too 
Armada, loug; he had no idea how strong England had 
grown in the thirty years of Elizabeth's reign. 
And though he was now King of Portugal as 
well as Spain, and master of all the gold mines 
of America, he was as stingy as Elizabetli. 
Even in this critical year, 1588, his "Armada" 
was not nearly big enough to win, and it was 
very badly equipped as a fighting force; his 
ships did not carry enough gunpowder, and 
most of their provisions were rotten. Still, 
the terror was great in many English hearts 
as the Spaniards swept up channel in the last 
half of July. For one long, hot week our light 
and swift sailing ships hung round their flanks, 
knocking their spars to pieces at long range, 
almost without the loss of a single English 
life or gun. The object of the Spaniards was 
to avoid fighting until they came off the Dutch 
coast, for there was a large Spanish army col- 
lected in the River Scheldt, under the great 
General Parma, ready to be ferried across to 




HE, TIME OTTHB 5YRM/\D?\ 
E.h^BTH REVIEWS THE TRP©l»i» AT TIT^BVIO? 



THE SPANISH ARMADA 161 

the mouth of the Thames. But before the 
Spaniards reached the Straits of Dover their 
fleet had been half crippled by the English 
guns; and, when they were off Calais, a lot of 
boats smeared with pitch and full of gunpowder 
were set on fire and set adrift among them. 
This so terrified the Spanish Admiral that he 
put his whole fleet about and fled into the 
North Sea. Then great gales arose and drove 
them northward and ever northward. Many 
were wrecked, the remainder lumbered round 
Scotland and southward again round Ireland; 
perhaps half or one third, and these, mostly 
mere hulks, arrived at length in the harbours 
of Spain; the winds and waves and rocks had 
finished what the English guns had begun: 

Long, long in vain the waiting mothers kneel 

In the white palaces of far Castile. 

Weep, wide brown eyes that watch along the 

shore, 
Your dark-haired lovers shall return no 

more; 
Only it may be, on the rising tide. 
The shattered hull of one proud bark may 

glide. 
To moor at even on a smooth bay's breast, 
Where the South mountains lean toward the 

West, 



162 ELIZABETH 

A wraith of battle with her broken spars, 
Between the water's shimmer and the stars.* 



England Our country, and, with her, the great cause 
testant- of freedom and Protestantism, were saved. 
save™ Spain was now known to be mainly a bugbear 
to frighten children, and England and Eliza- 
beth ruled the waves. 

The last The great Queen lived for fifteen years after 
Elizabeth, her victory, and her enemy, Philip, lived for 
igos' ten. She never realized how complete that 
victory had been; when her best councillors and 
her bravest sailors urged her to follow it up and 
blow the Spanish once and for all out of the 
seas, she utterly refused. She allowed occa- 
sional raids on the Spanish coasts and colonies, 
and one of these took the city and burned the 
great dockyard of Cadiz; but pay for a big war 
she would not; though, in a big war, swift 
victory was all but certain, and would have 
produced a lasting peace. Her last years were 
very lonely; she had never married; the great 
men who had helped her to make England a 
first-rate power, Burghley, Walsingham, Drake, 

Her sue- GrcnviUc, had died before her. The rising 
generation was all looking toward her successor, 
and that could only be King James of Scotland, 
whom she cordially hated, and whom she knew 

*Sir James Rennell Rodd: Oxford Prize Poem, 1880, "Raleigh." 



"TOGETHER" 163 

to be incapable of continuing her work. The 
Church of England, which she had nursed, was 
indeed safe; but the Puritan party within it 
was growing, and was strong even in Parlia- 
ment. All this foretold that seventeenth-cen- 
tury England would have plenty of troubles 
to face, though no such dangers from foreign 
foes and religious strife as had threatened it 
during the seventy years of Elizabeth's life and 
the forty-five of her reign. She died at Rich- 
mond in the seventieth year of her age in 1603. 

"Together" 

When Horse and Rider each can trust the 

other everywhere. 
It takes a fence and more than a fence to pound 

that happy pair; 
For the one will do what the other demands, 

although he is beaten and blown, 
And when it is done, they can live through a 

run that neither could face alone. 

When Crew and Captain understand each other 

to the core, 
It takes a gale and more than a gale to put 

their ship ashore; 
For the one will do what the other commands, 

although they are chilled to the bone. 



164 ELIZABETH 

And both together can Hve through weather 
that neither could face alone. 

When King and People understand each other 

past a doubt, 
It takes a foe and more than a foe to knock that 

country out; 
For the one will do what the other one asks as 

soon as the need is known. 
And hand in hand they can make a stand which 

neither could make alone! 

This wisdom had Elizabeth and all her sub- 
jects too, 

For she was theirs and they were hers as well 
the Spaniard knew; 

For when his grim Armada came to conquer 
the Nation and Throne, 

Why, back to back they met an attack that 
neither could face alone! 

It is not wealth nor talk nor trade nor schools 

nor even the Vote, 
Will save your land when the enemy's hand is 

tightening round your throat. 
But a King and a People who thoroughly trust 

each other in all that is done 
Can sleep on their bed without any dread — 

for the world will leave 'em alone! 



CHAPTER Vin 

THE EARLY STUARTS AND THE 
GREAT CIVIL WAR, 1603-60 

^ Henry VIII and Elizabeth had given England J^JJI^^' 
^unity and patriotism. Would the next race his char- 
of kings, the Stuarts, be able to maintain unity? 
That was the question which every one was 
asking while King James I was slowly riding 
from Scotland to London in 1603. James, of 
whom you may read the character in Sir Walter 
Scott's beautiful story, "The Fortunes of Nigel," 
was already thirty -five, "an old King," he said; 
and he had had a miserable time in Scotland 
between the turbulent nobles and the Presby- 
'terian ministers who were always preaching 
at him. And he had been very poor. He 
knew England to be rich, and thought he was 
going to be a rich and great King. He was a 
firm and very learned Protestant, a kindly man, 
though irritable and conceited. He saw a great 
deal farther than most of his subjects saw, but 
he never understood the temper of the English 
people; and above all he did not know, as the 

165 



166 THE EARLY STUARTS 

Tudors had known, when he had "come to the 
place called Stop." You might describe him as 

The child of Mary Queen of Scots, 

A shifty mother's shiftless son. 
Bred up among intrigues and plots 

Learned in all things, wise in none! 
Ungainly, babbling, wasteful, weak. 

Shrewd, clever, cowardly, pedantic. 
The sight of steel would blanch his cheek. 

The smell of baccy drive him frantic. 
He was the author of his line — 

He wrote that witches should be burnt; 
He wrote that monarchs were divine. 

And left a son who proved they weren't! 

Temper of Now the temper of the English people was 

^^^ ' going to be a very serious matter. They were 

fully "grown up," and fully aware that they 

were grown up; and they did not want to be 

"in leading strings" any longer. Even the 

great Elizabeth, in her last years, had galled 

this proud temper a good deal. She had 

scolded her Parliaments and done high-handed 

things against the law. But she had served 

and guided her people faithfully, and they knew 

it and made allowances accordingly. 

of the James I and his son Charles I, never thought 

Mngs! of themselves as "servants" of their people. 



jNOKTHERN Shetland^f 

SCOTLAND '^'""^ ' 

Half £cale of msdn inajj 




GREAT BRITAIN TO ILLUSTRATE HISTORY FROM THE NORMAN 
CONQUEST TO THE PRESENT DAY 






RELIGIOUS QUARRELS 167 

They wanted to rule as the Tudors had ruled, 
though the need for the guidance and the lead- 
ing strings had passed away. They were not 
'* tyrants" or cruel men or extortioners, but 
they irritated the nation until they provoked 
rebellion and civil war. And so they broke 
the unity of King and People, which was hardly 
restored again before the reign of Victoria the 
Great. 

The main thinff to remember about them is Their 
that they quarrelled continually with their with Par- 
Parliaments, with the House of Lords almost '^™'^" ^' 
as much as with the House of Commons; and 
nearly all their quarrels were over religion or 
money. The House of Commons took the 
lead in the quarrels, because it was the most 
powerful body of gentlemen in the country. 
The Tudors had flattered and strengthened it 
enormously, and added very largely to its num- 
bers; for they had been rather afraid of the 
House of Lords. The Stuarts added more 
than a hundred members to the House of Lords 
in the hope of getting its support against the 
Commons, but without much success. 

First then, for the quarrels about religion. ReUgious 

. . J quarrels: 

England was growmg more Puritan every day. dangers 
Men saw that the Church of Rome had "set Rome 
its house in order" since the Reformation, and ^s^*°- 
so was regaining its ground everywhere. It 



James's 



168 JAMES I 

was catching hold of kings and courtiers, even 
in lands that had been soundly Protestant 
fifty years before. Spain backed it up with 
sword and gun; and Spain, though the old men 
who had beaten the Armada might laugh at 
her, still seemed to be a gigantic power. James 
leaning I was bcut ou keeping peace with Spain and 

to Spain. .Ill- . c • 1 

Wished ms son to marry a bpanisn princess. 

This, said the Puritans, would simply bring 

Tiie"Gim- back the Pope and Popery to England. Once 

Plot." some wicked and hot-headed Catholics made a 

^^^^' plot to blow up the King and both Houses of 

Parliament with gunpowder (1605). I think 

you have all heard of Guy Fawkes and the 

"Fifth of November," but perhaps, when we 

see his absurd figure carried about in the streets, 

we are apt to forget that, on that day in the 

year 1605, he was actually found in a cellar 

under the Houses of Parliament, watching a lot 

of barrels of gunpowder to which he was going 

to set light the next morning when Parliament 

should have met. The King and the Prince of 

Wales, and all the Bishops, Lords and Commons 

would have met a horrible death, and the 

friends of Fawkes would then have seized the 

^(!?The Government on behalf of the Catholics. No 

Puritans; woudcr Protcstauts hatcd and feared a religion 

High . , 

Church" in whose name such things could be planned. 
Church." The Puritans also said that the English Church 



CIVIL QUARRELS 169 

was getting too much like the Cathohc Church; 
or becoming, as we should say now, too "High 
Church." The bishops were too powerful, the 
services too splendid, even the teaching was 
growing Catholic again. So these Puritans 
began to cry out, first for a limit to the power of 
the bishops, then for their abolition, and finally 
for the abolition of the Prayer Book. But, 
when it came to that cry, England was by no 
means united, and at last was divided on the 
religious question into two camps of nearly 
equal strength, who were obliged to fight it 
out in a bloody civil war. 

On the second question, the quarrels about ^*^^^ , 

^ \ quarrels; 

money, which we can call the "civil" as opposed unlawful 
to the religious causes of quarrel, there was no etc. 
real division of opinions. No one of any im- 
portance in England wanted the King to be 
able to take taxes at his pleasure, nor to keep 
people in prison without bringing them to 
trial, nor to make war or peace without con- 
sulting his Parliament. The Tudor s had done 
many of these things, but, on the whole, with 
the approval of the whole nation and for its 
good. The people they kept in prison without 
trial were usually foreign spies or traitors, who 
were threatening the very existence of England 
as a nation. James and Charles, however, sent 
members of Parliament to prison for speeches 



170 JAMES I 

made in Parliament against the "tyranny" 
of the bishops, against taxes, against unpatri- 
otic aUiances with Spain. They took, at the 
EngHsh ports, Customs' duties on goods with- 
The out consent of ParHament. They did indeed 

Stuart • • r» TVT i i • 

Navy, mamtam a fine Navy, and they certamly built 
splendid ships, but they did nothing with them. 
Their sailors were itching to cut Spanish and 
Popish throats far away in America, and Portu- 
guese throats far away in India; but the fleet 
was kept hanging about in the Channel, while 
the flag was insulted by Frenchmen, by Span- 
iards, and even by our old friends, the Protes- 
tant Dutch. So at last men were unwilling 
to serve in such a Navy; and had to be "im- 
pressed," that is, compelled to serve. And 
when King Charles, in 1635-6-7, asked for a 
tax called "Ship-money," to maintain the Navy, 
money," men began to say "No," "not without consent 

1637 . 

of ParHament," and so on. 
The It was the same story with the Army, or 
"MiSL?" rather with the old "militia" of "every man 
armed in his county," which did duty for an 
Army. The Tudors had not been very success- 
ful in their efforts to make this force a real one. 
Men hated the service and shirked it when they 
could; they talked nonsense about "England 
not wanting an Army when she had got such a 
fine Navy." You will often hear the same sort 



DEATH OF JAMES I 171 

of nonsense talked nowadays; don't believe it! 
King James, toward the end of his reign, had 
a fine opportunity of showing that England 
could bite by land as well as by sea; for a fright- The 
f ul war broke out in Germany between Catholics Years^ 
and Protestants, which was to last for thirty g^^'" 
years; and all good Protestants in England and ™^°^;g 
Scotland were eager to go and help their broth- 
ers in Germany. But James couldn't make his 
mind up: he talked big and sent messengers 
flying about to the Kings of Europe, but act 
he would not; and so nothing was done except 
that a great many volunteers went, both from 
England and Scotland, and learned soldiering 
to some purpose, as James's son. King Charles 
I, was to find out one day. Till that day there 
was no real Army in England, although Charles, 
when he came to the throne, tried to establish 
a general right of "impressing" soldiers, and 
quarrelled with his Parliaments at once about 
it. Lastly, James dismissed all his Parliaments 
in anger, and used rude language in doing so. 
When he died in 1625, nearly all the seeds of the james i, 
future civil war had been sowed. • ^^^^* 

Charles I, the "Martyr King," was a very Charles i, 

. 1625-49" 

different man from his father; he was shy, his char- 
proud, cold, ignorant of the world, obstinate ^^^^^' 
and mistrustful. He did not mean to lie, but 
he hardly ever told the whole truth; and so 



172 CHARLES I 

neither his enemies nor his friends could trust 
him. James would have liked to be good 
friends with his people, and was at bottom 
what we call "a good fellow," with a strong 
sense of fun^ Charles never made a joke in 
his life, and did not care twopence for public 
opinion, or for being friends with any one ex- 
cept his bishops. His wife, moreover, was a 
Catholic and a Frenchwoman and cared nothing 
for England. Though a firm Protestant, 
Charles was much more "High Church" than 
James, and wanted to give the bishops more 
power. He did once interfere (1627) on behalf 
of the French Protestants who were (rather 
mildly) ill treated at that time by their Kings, 
His quar- but hc made a complete mess of the task. That 

rels with itii*- ji* • j • 

three Par- was at the bcgmumg oi ms reign, and, as m 
^^^1625-9'. ^i^ fi^^^ ^^^^ years he quarrelled openly with his 
first three Parliaments, he could hardly get 
money enough to help him to live and govern 
England, and none to defend the honour of 
Eleven England abroad. Then for eleven years, 
wifhout 1629-40, he called no Parliament at all. This 
^menT ^^^ ^^^ lougcst interval without a Parliament 
1629-40. since the reign of Henry III, and to all English- 
men, whose tempers were now boiling over, it 
seemed intolerable. 
perity of Duriug this period Charles took the Customs ' 
tide, duties at the ports, though Parliament had 



QUARREL WITH SCOTLAND 173 

never granted them to him, and they proved 
to be his main source of income, for, of course, 
the long peace since 1605 had greatly increased 
English trade, not only with all European coun- 
tries (especially Turkey, Russia, Portugal and 
Spain), but also, in spite of Spanish jealousy, 
with Spanish America, the West and East 
Indies, and the Colonies which were now be- 
ginning to be founded in North America (as I 
will tell you later on in Chapter IX) . Our " East 
India Company," which began to build for us our 
Indian Empire of to-day, had been founded at 
the end of Elizabeth's reign. 

Beside the " Customs," there were lots of other Charles's 

quarrel 

little sources of income, many of them quite with 
against the law, and altogether Charles had a les?. 
revenue of about a million pounds a year, which 
certainly enabled him to live as long as he could 
keep the peace. Perhaps he might never have 
called a Parliament again if he had not 
quarrelled about religion with his subjects in 
Scotland. His Archbishop of Canterbury was 
William Laud, an honourable but narrow- 
minded man, who set himself to weed out the 
Puritan party in the Church of England, and to 
make every one conform to the services of the 
Prayer Book. All Puritan England was al- 
ready growling deeply at this, when it occurred 
to Laud to try to enforce the same services and 



174 CHARLES I 

ceremonies on Presbyterian Scotland. Some 
steps in this direction had been begun by King 
James, but had met with very Httle success; 
there were, however, already some sort of re- 
stored bishops in Scotland, though they had no 
power. Suddenly, in 1637, Charles resolved 
to force upon Scotland the whole of the Prayer 
Book, as a first step toward making the Church 
quite uniform in the two kingdoms. 
Resist- Scotland, poor, proud, and intensely patriotic, 
of the had for long felt sore and neglected since its 
iq^q] native kings had gone from Edinburgh to Lon- 
don. At this "English" insult it simply rose 
and slammed the door in the faces of the 
King and his Archbishop. A "Covenant" was 
rpj^g signed in Edinburgh and all over Scotland, 
"Cove- which bound all men by the most solemn oath 
1638. to maintain the Presbyterian Church and to 
root out bishops and all their works; th« Cov- 
enanters flatly refused all compromise, and 
Charles, if he were to remain a king at all in 
Scotland, would have to fight. It would be 
no easy task; for neither Edward I nor Henry 
VIII at the head of a united England had been 
successful against the Scots. And Charles and 
Laud were almost the only people in England 
who did not think the Scots were right to resist! 
The Scots got together a much better army 
than Charles could get, and faced him sturdily; 



THE LONG PARLIAMENT 175 

the first "Bishops' War," as the Puritans called ^h? first 

ijishops 

it, was a dead failure. *' Call your Parliament, War," 
Sir," was the only advice his councillors could 
give the King. 

Charles gave way, and, in April, 1640, called pariia?"'^^ 
a Parliament which, as he dismissed it in a ment, 
few days, had the nickname of "The Short Par- May, 
liament." For, instead of giving him cash ^^^^' 
to crush Scotland with, it began to pour out 
a torrent of the grievances of the past eleven 
years, nay, of the past thirty-seven years; 
grievances about taxes, customs, ship-money; 
about bishops, popery in high places, judges 
who twisted the law to please the King, and 
so forth. After one more effort at war with ^^^ , 

second 

Scotland in the summer, during which the Scots "Bishops' 
simply walked into England as far as Durham i64o'. 
and sat down there, the King had to own him- 
self beaten, and to call, on November 3, 1640, ^eetrng 
a Parliament that was to be anything but short. Long Par- 
History knows it as "The Long Parliament." Nov. s,' 

The leaders of this body were no revolution- 
ists or "radicals." Nearly all were great 
lawyers or country gentlemen of old families 
and rich estates: Hampden, Pym, Holies, 
Vane, Cromwell, Hyde, Falkland, were the 
leaders in the Commons; Essex, Warwick, 
Bedford, Broke, and Saye in the Lords. The 
great merchants of the City of London, which 



1640. 



176 CHARLES I 

was already perhaps the greatest place of trade 
in the world, were on the same side. 
inten- ]s^q ^j^g jjg^^j ^\^q least intention of upsetting 

tions of its . . . 

leaders, the throne of King Charles. But in civil 
matters all were agreed in wishing to purify 
the Law Courts and to restore the "ancient 
constitution," by which they meant the control 
of Parliament over the Crown, as it had existed 
before the Wars of the Roses. The "strong 
government" of the Tudors, they said, had 
been necessary at the time; it was no longer 
necessary. The King of England ought to be a 
"limited monarch," not an "absolute monarch," 
and Charles must be made to realize the fact. 

Work of So, in about nine months, the whole fabric 
nine of the civil govcmment was thoroughly over- 
hauled. The King's one honourable and clever 
minister, the Earl of Strafford, was sent to the 
Tower and at length beheaded. Archbishop 
Laud was sent to the Tower. The judges 
who had twisted the law to please the King 
were removed, and provision was made against 
their twisting it in the future. Several new 
law courts, which had grown up in Tudor times, 
were taken away: the power of levying any 
taxes without full consent of Parliament was 
taken away; and it was decided that hence- 
forward Parliament should meet at least every 
three years. 



months. 



I 



THE IRISH REBELLION 177 

. '^ , 

All this was done with the most thundering A "f* 

applause of the nation, from Tweed to Tamar, Nation. 
from Kent to Cumberland; for, as I have said, 
all men were agreed as to the "civil" causes 
of complaint against their King. But it was 
another story when questions relating to re- The 
ligion were touched. Only one half of England quSSon. 
was Puritan or wished to abolish bishops or 
Prayer Book. Three fourths of the House of 
Lords and nearly half the House of Commons 
were against making any such change; and this 
at once began to give the King "a party" in 
the State. He meant to use that party not 
only to save the Church, but also, if possible, 
to restore his own "strong government" in 
civil matters. So things stood in the autumn 
of 1641; and two events then hurried on the 
civil war, the King's visit to Scotland, and a 
rebellion in Ireland. 

Our Parliament men easily guessed that the The 
King's visit to Scotland was made in order to vis^f to 
see whether, if he had to fight his Parliament, Augjfg?f' 
the Scots would help him. For he gave the i^^i- 
Scots everything that they asked, and showered 
honours on their leaders; in fact, he appealed 
to their old jealousy of England. Still he got 
little or no promise of help there. The 

To understand the other thing, the Irish Rebellion 
rebellion, we must go back a long way. No i64i/'^' 



178 CHARLES I 

English sovereign had seriously tried to govern 
State of Ireland before the Tudors. The kings had 
re an . ^f^^^ made grants of Irish land to Englishmen, 
who had then gone over there and had, in a few 
years, become wilder than the Irish themselves. 
There was some shadow of English government 
in Leinster, with a "Lord Deputy" as Governor, 
and a sort of Irish Parliament; but, in the fif- 
teenth century, the English territory had shrunk 
to a very narrow district round Dublin called 
"the Pale." Outside the Pale, it was all 
broken heads and stolen cows, as it had been 
Ireland for a thousaud years. But Henry VIII had 
'^^udorT taken the task of government in hand, and had 
tried to turn the wild Irish chiefs into decent 
English landowners, who should really come to 
Parliament, help the judges in keeping order, 
and cultivate their lands properly. He had 
dissolved the Irish monasteries as he had dis- 
solved the English, and had given their lands 
to these chiefs. He put down rebellious earls 
with a very strong hand, and quite successfully. 
He had taken the title of *'King" of Ireland. 
The "Reformation" had been started in Ire- 
land under Edward VI, but there had been little 
Reformation for Mary to suppress, and no 
"heretics" were burned there. Certainly, until 
the middle of the sixteenth century, Ireland 
had shown little affection for Pope or Catholic 



IRELAND 




PALE 
SttuCentmry 

ablin 



C-!^/ 



CATHOLIC REBELLIONS 179 

faith. But rebellion in some shape remained Catholic 

rebel- 

the one thing that Irish chiefs loved, and it lioas 
occurred to some of them, especially to one 
Shan O'Neill, early in the reign of Elizabeth, 
that a rebellion in the name of religion would 
be a much more successful affair than without 
that name: "England is now Protestant; 
therefore let Ireland rise for the Pope," was 
Shan's idea. Philip of Spain saw a splendid 
chance (for the Pope and himself) of injuring 
Elizabeth by sending aid to Irish-Catholic ^^^ . , 

n Spanish 

rebellions; and, from 1570 at least, he con- aid. 
tinned to do so either secretly or openly until 
his death. The idea "caught on," as we should 
say, with the whole Irish nation, and every one 
went about shouting "Pope aboo," "Spain 
aboo," and "O'Neil (or Desmond, or some 
other wild earl) aboo." Thus England, when 
she tried to keep order, always appeared to 
be "persecuting" Catholics in Ireland. But Colonies 
Elizabeth could not face the frightful cost of tations" 
keeping order there until the last two years Jn^sL-^^ 
of her reign, when she went to work in earnest *^^^*^ 

^ century. 

and with some success. Usually she had pre- 
ferred to plant "colonies" of Englishmen upon 
some Irish districts which had been confiscated 
after a rebellion. So Munster was "planted," 
1583; so Ulster was planted with Scottish land- Colony of 

. Ulster 

owners, tradesmen and artisans by James I. i607. 



180 CHARLES I 

These last were mostly Presbyterians, and 
made vigorous and successful colonists. But, of 
course, the Irish landowners, who had rebelled 
and been turned out, always hoped to recover 
their land. And the rebellion of 1641 was 
prompted either by this hope, or by the fear 
of fresh confiscation. 
Rebellion g^t to the Puritaus in the English Parlia- 
lics, 1641. ment it seemed to be simply a rebellion of the 
"wicked Papists," "probably got up by the 
King," they said, "certainly by the Queen, 
in order to give excuse for raising an army 
to use against the English Parliament." And, 
English with this fear in their heads, the leaders of 
^ment Parliament were now driven to take steps far 
fright- beyond any they had intended a year before. 
First they brought forward laws for the utter 
"Militia abolition of bishops and all their works; and 
D^em- ^^^^ ^^^^ *^ transfer the command of the army 
aer, 1641. or militia from the Crown to Parliament. 
Civil War This last was revolution pure and simple. 
™ ^'^ *■ No king could agree to this, and so Charles 
began to set about preparations for war. Large 
numbers of Members of Parliament came to 
join him from both houses; but those that re- 
mained at Westminster were of course all the 
more determined to fight. 
^"^^and The words "rebeUion," "treason," "traitor" 
^St are very ugly words; and traitors in those days 



CAVALIERS AND ROUNDHEADS 181 

were put to a very ugly death. So, many 
moderate men, who had hated Charles's unlaw- 
ful government, and applauded all the work of 
this Parliament during its first nine months, 
now threw in their lot with the Crown. So 
did many men who cared nothing for bishops; 
Charles was their King, and his flag was flying 
in the field. There were many men, too, who 
hated the long sermons and the gloomy nature 
of the Puritans; for the Puritans objected to 
country sports, may-poles, dancing, and to 
lots of innocent amusements. These "Cava- 
liers" called the Parliament men "Round- 
heads," "crop-eared rogues," and so on; they 
gave the King an excellent force of cavalry, 
in which arm the Parliament was at first 
weak. The King's foot-soldiers were mostly 
Cornishmen or Welshmen, good fellows to 
fight, too. 

But the Parliament had the richer districts 
of the kingdom, the South and East; London 
was in its grip; it had the most of the fleet; 
and much the fuller purse. It is a great mis- 
take to imagine that the war was one of gentle- 
men against merchants and traders. Nearly 
half the country gentlemen of England were 
Puritans, and at first all the leaders on both 
sides were drawn from the upper classes; later 
on there were one or two instances, on each side. 



182 CHARLES I 

where men of lesser birth rose to high commands 
in the armies. 
The two The equipment of each force was much the 
^™42! same; the infantry carried either long clumsy- 
muskets which could shoot about 300 yards 
at extreme range, or "pikes," which were 
straight two-edged knives fastened on to long 
poles. Each side cast a few light field-guns, 
which did little damage; but later on the Par- 
liament cast some heavy siege-guns which really 
finished the war. Each side had soldiers who 
had fought in the German wars. Prince Ru- 
pert, Sir Jacob Astley, Sir Ralph Hopton for 
the King; Lord Essex, Lord Manchester, Sir 
William Waller, Sir Thomas Fairfax for the 
Parliament. The King had perhaps this ad- 
vantage: when the war began no one had yet 
dreamed of deposing him, much less of 
killing him. "Whatever we do, he will still 
be the King and his sons after him," was the 
idea in the minds even of the staunchest of his 
enemies. So at first Parhament was "afraid 
of beating the King too much." But Charles 
had no need to be afraid of beating his rebels 
too much. 
Fine Oucc battle was joined, each side displayed 
of both the greatest gallantry, chivalry and mercy. 
sides. -^^ ^g^j. ^gg g^gj, fQug]2t with so much bloodshed 

in battle and so little cruelty after battle. 



BATTLE OF EDGEHILL 183 

Except where actual fighting or a siege was 
going on, civil life was not interrupted. Down 
to the end of 1643 the advantage was on the 
whole with the King. Then both men and 
money began to fail him, and an incomparable 
leader came to the front for the Parliament 
in the person of Oliver Cromwell, who was to 
finish the war and die, ten years later, some- 
thing very like King of Great Britain, 

With what feelings the men in either army 
must have looked upon each other before the 
first great battle ! 

Naked and gray the Cotswolds stand Before 

Beneath the autumn sun, gght! ^ 

And the stubble fields on either hand feia!'^'^' 

Where Stour and Avon run. 

There is no change in the patient land 
That has bred us every one. 

She should have passed in cloud and fire 

And saved us from this sin 
Of war — red war — 'twixt child and sire. 

Household and kith and kin. 
In the heart of a sleepy Midland shire. 

With the harvest scarcely in. 

But there is no change as we meet at last 
On the brow-head or the plain. 



184 CHARLES I 

And the raw astonished ranks stand fast 

To slay or to be slain 
By the men they knew in the kindly past 

That shall never come again — 

By the men they met at dance or chase. 

In the tavern or the hall, 
At the justice-bench and the market-place, 

At the cudgel-play or brawl. 
Of their own blood and speech and race. 

Comrades or neighbours all! 

More bitter than death this day must prove ] 

Whichever way it go. 
For the brothers of the maids we love 

Make ready to lay low 
Their sisters' sweethearts, as we move 

Against our dearest foe. 

Thank Heaven! At last the trumpets peal 

Before our strength gives way. 
For King or for the Commonweal — 

No matter which they say. 
The first dry rattle of new-drawn steel 

Changes the world to-day! 

Progress Thc King vcry nearly got into London, after 

""^^^^^ a fierce drawn battle at Edgehill in Warwick- 

1642-3. shire, in the autumn of 1642; but the Londoners 




PRINCE RUPERT AT OXFORD, GOING TO BATTLE 



THE PARLIAMENTARY ARMY 185 

turned out in such force for the defence of the 
city, and looked so grim, that Charles dared not The King 
fight his way in. He fell back on Oxford, i643-6?^ ' 
and fixed his headquarters there; it was an 
excellent centre; he meant to move one army 
up from Yorkshire, another from Cornwall, 
and a third from Oxford, and so to crush Par- 
liament between three fires. All 1643 he 
strove for this, and his generals won victories 
both in the north and west. But then John JohnPym 
Pym, the statesman who took the lead in Par- tL^Scots 
liament, called in the aid of the Scots. The p^p^fP 
Scots agreed to come, but demanded that ™ent. 
their "Covenant," to enforce the Presbyterian 
Church on all three kingdoms, should be the Battle of 
price of their coming. In 1644 they came and Moor, 
helped to rout the King's best army at Marston ^ ^^' 
Moor, near York. 

The real victor in that battle was, however, Oliver 
Oliver Cromwell, a Huntingdonshire squire, well, 
forty-three years of age, who had never seen 
a shot fired until he began to raise the sturdy 
Puritan farmers of the Eastern Counties for 
the Parliament. He trained them and led them 
till they became the *' Ironsides," the finest The ^ 
cavalry in the world. Look well at them, and 
think of them; for they are the direct fore- 
runners of the cavalry regiments of our present 
gallant little army. Cromwell was no narrow- 



186 CHARLES I 

minded Puritan, and for forms of Church gov- 
ernment he cared not a straw. But he held that 
God spoke to each individual man's soul and 
pointed out his path for him. He thought that 
all forms were just so many fetters on men's 
souls, and that all churches, especially the 
Roman and English, had laid on such fetters. 
And he had been a strong opponent of the King 
in civil matters also. Moreover, he saw, as 
no one else saw, that "half -measures " would 
never finish the war. "If I met the King in 
the field, I would pistol him," he said. 
The "New Jq 1^45 ^ ncw Parliamentary army, better 
Army, paid and better armed and more in earnest, 
was raised under Fairfax and Cromwell, and 
it won, within three months, the great victory of 
Naseby, which practically brought the Royalist 
Naseby, causc to an cud. A few gallant Highlanders 
under Montrose made a diversion for the King 
in Scotland, but Montrose too was beaten 
before the year was over. Charles had already 
called into England all the soldiers whom he had 
sent to put down the Irish rebels, and he tried 
to get the help of these same rebels themselves. 
This, as you can imagine, did not make his 
cause more popular with his English Protestant 
subjects. He was in fact a very bad leader of 
a very good cause. Early in 1646 the King 
fled to the Scottish army and Oxford surren- 



1645. 




CROMWELL WITH HIS IRONSIDES 



PARLIAMENT PERPLEXED 187 

dered. The Scots, after trying to induce him J.^« ^^^s 

. nies to 

to take the oath of the Covenant, sold him for the Scots, 
£400,000 to the Enghsh Parhament as a is soi(f"io 
prisoner and went back home. The Parha- f^^^^t^' 
ment spent the years 1647 and 1648 in trying 
to make some sort of treaty with Charles so 
that the government of the country might con- 
tinue under a king; Charles argued each point, 
and was ready to promise, now this, now that, 
but never anything sincerely. All the time he 
was trying to get help from France, or from 
Scotland, or from Ireland 

Meanwhile the Parliamentary leaders had Pariia- 
to try to fulfil their treaty with the Scots. They ^exed,^^ 
could abolish bishops, sell all the lands of the i^*^-'^-^- 
Church of England, turn out all the Royalist 
parsons, and forbid the use of the Prayer Book; 
but they found it almost impossible to estab- 
lish a Presbyterian Church in England. In 
reality few Englishmen wanted this. Even 
those who had most wanted to pull down bishops 
began to see that "ministers and elders" might 
try to force men's consciences quite as much Crom- 
as bishops had done. No one felt this more army 
than Cromwell; and, what Cromwell thought, S^Var- 
his Army, which had finished the war, thought jgj^^g*' 
also. This Army began to growl against its 
masters the Parliament. It also began to 
growl for the punishment of "Charles Stuart, 



188 CHARLES I 

that man of blood." When Charles did at 
last persuade the Scots, who were by this time 
very cross with the Parliament, to come in 
again on his behalf, this growl became an 
open cry; the Army duly went and smashed 

Preston, the Scots at Prcstou, and then came back to 
London resolved on the King's death. 

Cromwell hesitated long; he was a merciful 
Trial and man, and he saw what a terrible thing he had 
Charles I, to do — to kill a King! But he believed that 

30T1S tli^ Lord guided his mind, and that there 
could be no peace while Charles lived. Par- 
liament was utterly horrified at this suggestion, 
but it was at the mercy of the Army which it 
had created. Cromwell turned out over a 
liundred of its most moderate members and 
terrified the remainder. A sham court of jus- 
tice was established to try and to condemn 
the King. Charles, of course, refused to ac- 
knowledge that any court had any power to try 
him; and he met his death on January 30, 1649, 
with perfect serenity and courage. The very 
men who did the deed were terrified at what 
they were doing. 
Was Charles was a martyr, a martyr for the Eng- 

^martyr?' ^^^^ Church and its government by bishops, 
a martyr for our beautiful and dear Prayer 
Book. But the fact that he was a martyr did 
not make him a good king or a good man. 



THE RULE OF THE SWORD 189 

Yet, though Charles had often overridden 
the law, and, if he had got back to power, would what is 
have done so again, what had the Army and in ms^" 
the dregs of the Long Parliament to put in ^^^^^^ 
his place? They confiscated and sold to new 
owners much of the land of those who had 
fought for the King. They set up a sort of 
Republic which they called "The Common- The 
wealth," with a Council of State, and a single wealth" 
House of Parliament, in fact the "Rump" pubUc. 
of the Long Parliament, as witty cavaliers 
called it. They abolished the House of Lords 
the day after they had murdered the King. In 
reality they had abolished Law, Order, and 
the old natural Constitution; and all their 
efforts for the next eleven years to put anything 
artificial in its place were hopeless failures. 
The one real fact left in England was the Army; The Rule 
this meant the rule of the Sword, the worst Sword. 
of all conceivable tyrannies, however good 
the men may be who wield that Sword. 

They were good men who wielded it. Crom- 
well was a man of the most lofty character, 
and so were many of his associates. They were 
also great patriots and great Englishmen. But 
nineteen twentieths of Englishmen hated the 
whole thing heart and soul, looked upon Charles 
I's death as an abominable murder, and only 
prayed for Charles II to come and avenge it. 



190 CROMWELL 

Charles 11 That young man, now nineteen years old, 

an/\n had fled to the Continent. The Scots invited 

Scotland, jj-j^ |.Q Scotland, made him take the Covenant 

(which he hated), and prepared to fight for him. 

Cromwell But Cromwcll and his Ironsides, after going 

land, across and stamping out the Irish rebellion with 

^^^^' a great deal of cruelty, made short work of one 

Scottish army at Dunbar in 1650, and of an- 

Battiesof other, which had invaded England, at Worces- 

1650, and tcr in 1651. The young King fought most 

te^TSi' gallantly at the latter battle, and had a series 

of hair-breadth escapes before he regained the 

Continent; you have often heard, perhaps, of 

how he spent a day in hiding in the upper 

branches of a great oak tree in Shropshire — 

While far below the Roundhead rode 
And hummed a surly hymn. 

That is why people wear oak eaves on May 
29, and why so many public houses still bear 
the sign of the "Royal Oak." 

Yet, if civil war was over, there was no civil 

Cromwell pcacc iu Britain; and in 1653 Cromwell was 

Protec- obliged to turn out the "Rump" of the Long 

eSIii? Parliament and to take on himself the govern- 

Scotiand, ment of England, Scotland, and Ireland as 

land, "Protector," a title which pleased his old 

friends little more than it pleased his old enemies. 



HIS RULE GOOD 191 

He made experiment after experiment in forms 
of government; tried sometimes with, and 
sometimes without, some sort of sham Parlia- 
ment; once he even tried to create a sort of 
sham House of Lords. But all these things 
were only thin disguises for the rule of the 
Sword and the Army. He was much pressed 
to take the title of king and to restore the old His rule 
Constitution, but from this he shrank. Except lated. " 
to Papists and to the beaten Church of England 
he was not intolerant; he believed in letting 
men's consciences be free, and he strove to 
make people righteous and God-fearing. All 
that, however, was a dismal failure; it only 
disgusted all moderate people with the whole 
Puritan creed. 

Yet, in Oliver's five years of rule, he accom- ^^^^^^^' 
plished what the Stuarts had not done in forty- of the 
five. Not only had he subdued Scotland and king- 
Ireland, but he even made them send thirty °^^' 
members apiece to a sort of united Parliament 
in England. And far more than this: he made 
the name of England once more dreaded and 
honoured abroad as it had not been since the 
death of Elizabeth. He wrung from the Dutch „. 

° His care 

a heavy payment for some wrongs they had of the 
done our traders in the Far East; he won for 
us a share in that Far-Eastern trade. He fell 
upon the Spaniards in the true style of Drake 



192 CROMWELL 

and Raleigh; he took their great plate fleet; 
he tore Jamaica from them; he sent his Iron- 
His vie- sides to France to aid France against Spain; 
over they were the first great English army seen 
^^^°' abroad since the fifteenth century, and where 
they fought they swept all before them. He 
took up the great cause of Protestantism all 
His over Europe When he died in 1658 England 
1658! was again the first naval power and almost 
the first military power in the world. 
Rkhard guj^ when his son Richard ("lazy Dick" or 
well. Pro- "tumbledown Dick," as people called him) 
1658-9'. succeeded him as Protector, the whole unnatural 
arrangement crumbled away at once, because 
it did not suit the spirit of the English people. 
Anarchy. There wcrc eighteen months of anarchy; now 
some soldier, now the restored "Rump," held 
power. At last, in January, 1660, General 
Monck, an old soldier of Cromwell's, who had 
the command in Scotland, made up his mind to 
restore the exiled King, Charles II. 
Restora- And ou his thirtieth birthday, the 29th of 
^King May, 1660, that clever and unprincipled young 
i?May gentleman rode into London amid the tears 
29, 1660. ^^^ shouts of a people gone mad with joy. 
The reign of the Sword was over, the reign of 
the Law had begun. Unfortunately this reign 
of the Sword left on men's minds an unreason- 
able hatred and fear, not only of this Puritan 



RESTORATION OF CHARLES II. 193 

army, but of all armies and that hatred and 
fear have too often paralyzed the armo Eng and, 
and is not wholly dead to-day. It has prevented 
men from seeing that to serve King and country 
in the Army is the second best profession for 
Englishmen of all classes; to serve in the Navy, 

I suppose all admit, is the best. Charles 

II prudently kept up a few of the regiments 
of Cromwell's old army, and even increased 
it a little during his reign. But he had often 
hard work to pay it, for his Parliaments were 
always jealous of a power that they knew had 
been their master once and might be so again. 



CHAPTER IX 

THE FALL OF THE STUARTS AND THE 
REVOLUTION, 1660-1688 

Charles The lessons of the "Great Rebellion" were 

80" by no means thrown away upon Charles 11. 

Again a ^^ kiYig after 1660 ever attempted to raise 

changed a penny without consent of Parliament. Once, 

England. r «/ ^ ' 

but only once, at the end of his reign, Charles 
let four years go by without calling a Parlia- 
ment. Once, but only for a moment, an un- 
lawful court of justice was created by James 
II; and there were hardly any other attempts 
at "strong government" of the Tudor type. 
There were plenty of quarrels to come between 
kings and parliaments, but these were nearly 
always about religion or foreign wars. 
The As far as possible everything was restored 
reSed! i^ Great Britain and Ireland as it had existed 
just before the Civil War. The two houses of 
Parliament, with all their old power, were 
restored. The Church of England, with Prayer 
Book and bishops, was restored as in 1640. 
It had suffered quite as much as the Crown, 

194 



THE DISSENTERS 195 

or the Cavaliers who had fought for the Crown. 
A certain amount but by no means all of the 
land was restored to its rightful owners. The 
church livings had been almost all given away TheDis 
to Presbyterians and other Dissenters. During 
the Rebellion a whole crop of " sects " had arisen, 
some of which, like the Congregationalists, 
Baptists, and Quakers, are still with us. In 
1660 all wished for nothing better than a peace- 
ful Hfe, and to conduct their worship in their 
own way. No one could complain when the 
church livings were given back to the Church 
of England; but it was a great mistake of p^riia. 
Parliament and Church to prevent the Dis- inent 
senters from holding their public worship as laws 
they pleased. It was a lasting misfortune for i^sien- 
England that a series of laws was passed in the ^iqqI.^ 
reign of Charles II to shut out both Catholics 
and Protestant Dissenters from all offices in 
the State, and even from offices in town councils. 
Catholics were excluded from Parliament, for 
the Great Rebellion had left a hatred of popery 
greater than that which had existed before it. 
These intolerant laws, though partly softened 
for Protestant Dissenters in 1690, and for 
Catholics also in the reign of George III, were 
not aboHshed till 1828 and 1829. Of course, 
no persons now suffered death for their religion 
(and it was in Charles II's reign that Queen 



196 CHARLES II 

Mary's laws for burning heretics were finally 
wiped out), but many Dissenters were im- 
prisoned, among them John Bunyan, author 
of "Pilgrim's Progress." 
The Re- Jn Scotland a similar restoration took place 
in Scot- of the old Scottish Parliament, in which Lords 
and Commons had always sat in one house; 
of Church government by bishops; of lands 
which had been confiscated. The extreme 
Covenanters refused to recognize these changes, 
and before long broke out into open rebellion 
in the south-west. Rebellion went on smoulder- 
ing a good deal until 1688; much cruelty was 
exercised, and much more was wrongly believed 
to have been exercised in putting it down. 
Charles's English ministers would have liked 
to govern Scotland from London and to unite 
the two Parliaments, but the patriotic spirit 
of the smaller country was as yet entirely 
against this. 

King Charles II came back to find a new 
Charac- kind of England, an England less high-minded, 
Charles less romautic, more *' modern," and more 
^^" commonplace than before the war. The coun- 
try was again set upon peace, order, and money- 
getting. The King set a bad example in his 
private life, but in his public life he was not 
by any means a bad King. He was very clever, 
and had a keen eye for the interests of trade. 



CHARACTER OF CHARLES II 197 

of the Colonies, and of the Navy. The Crom- 
wellians had bequeathed to him a very fine 
Navy; but too often he let it rot for want of 
spending money on it. His sailors were badly 
paid and badly cared for; he let his contractors 
swindle him, and he was too idle to look into 
small but important matters himself. Also 
he was always shockingly in want of money to 
spend upon pleasure, and, if Parliament would 
not give him enough, he was apt to ask the 
King of France to pay him large sums, in return 
for which he would promise to do something 
which that King wanted — not always to the 
honour of England. But, when he had got the 
money, Charles very seldom kept his promises 
to King Louis. 

France was now taking the place in the eyes EngUsh- 
of Englishmen which Spain had held in the dread of 
period 1560-1640, the place, that is, of the *''^'''=^' 
national bugbear and terror, whose vast army 
and vast wealth were to be used to help the 
Pope and to spread the Catholic faith. Eng- 
lishmen wanted to fight King Louis, just as they 
had wanted to fight King Philip in James I's 
days. Charles II, however, saw that our real and 
rivals were the Protestant Dutch, whose mer- with the 
chant-ships covered all seas, whose trading ^"*^ ' 
stations were all over the world. And, if 
you are to understand this, it is time that I 



198 CHARLES II 

told you something about the growth of our 
own Colonial Empire. 

The idea The first idea of all voyages to distant coun- 
nies tries had been to get either gold and silver, 

the^Seas. or precious goods like silk and spices, which 
could not be grown in Europe. Spain, Port- 
ugal, Holland, and France had all been ahead 
of us in the race of discovery; but we were going 
to beat them all in the long run. It was Sir 
SirWai- Walter Raleigh, in Elizabeth's reign, who 
RaieigS first imagined a truc "colony." He did not mean, 
as the Spaniards meant, a sort of shop, in which 
Enghshmen were to buy gold or silk or spices; 
but rather a "plantation" of Englishmen in 
some distant land who were to buy all their 
goods, their iron tools, their woollen clothes, 
their linen and their boots from England. 
This would, in the first place, give an enormous 
lift to English manufacturers, and, in the 
second place, would create a piece of " England- 
bey ond-the-sea," a piece, in fact, of an English 
Empire. Raleigh planned to plant such a col- 
ony in Virginia, on the shore of North America; 
it collapsed for want of funds. But the 
idea lived on, and in 1606 it was taken up again 
by a group of London merchants, who subscribed 
money and sent out colonists. By the year 1620 
Virginia was a flourishing little state. 

In that year some sturdy Puritans, since called 



THE PILGRIM FATHERS 199 

the "Pilgrim Fathers," got leave to emigrate The 
to North America. They objected to being path™ 
com^pelled to use the Prayer Book service in jq America, 
England, and wanted to worship God in their 
own fashion; and they founded a little state 
called "Plymouth" on the American coast. 
Other colonies, some religious, some commercial 
in their origin, soon followed, and by 1660 
the whole eastern coast of North America was British 
dotted with little English states; but between i^°Je"en. 
Virginia and the more sternly Puritan "New teenth 

ccnturv 

England" lay a little wedge on the valley 
of the River Hudson, which had been settled 
by the Dutch. There was no gold in North 
America, and, except tobacco, no rich natural 
crop; but there was a virgin soil of great fer- 
tility, vast forests full of valuable timber, 
swarms of fur-bearing animals like beavers, 
and splendid fisheries on the coasts. So these 
peoples rapidly grew into rich and prosperous 
little states, working, in a climate not unlike 
that of Europe, at the same sort of work that 
their fathers had loiown across the ocean. 

But many of the Colonies were full of Puritans Temper 
and Protestant Dissenters, the very men who, Colonists. 
in King Charles I's reign, had fought against 
the Crown. So there was born, in all our 
colonists, a spirit of resistance to government 
in general, and the quite foolish notion that all 



200 CHARLES II 

government is oppressive. Such a spirit might 
easily lead to rebellion. The colonists, how- 
ever, knew well that all round them were 
Frenchmen, Dutchmen, and Spaniards, casting 
greedy eyes on their riches, and that against 
these foes only the English fleet could protect 
them. So some sort of pretence of loyalty to 
their Mother Country was for many years 
almost a necessity to them. The Mother Coun- 
try usually left them to themselves; it never 
taxed them; it sent them Governors, who hoisted 
Govern- ^ British flas; outside their houses, and "took 

ment of , 

the the lead in Society," but did little other govern- 
ing. Each colony set up a miniature House 
of Commons, or something like it, of its own, 
and made its own laws on the English model. 
On one thing only England insisted, that the 
colonists were to buy their goods wholly from 
English merchants; and if they produced any 
goods which England wanted and could not 
grow herself {e. g., tobacco, rice, beaver skins) 
they were to send all such goods to England. 
Charles II fought two great wars with the 
The two Dutch during his reign; and great sailors came 
mj to the front, though none as great as Robert 
^^^l^i'i* Blake, who had been Cromwell's admiral. 

1672. ' 

The sailors and the Navy covered themselves 
with glory, but, as I said above, the manage- 
ment of the service was shockingly bad, and 



THE DUTCH WARS 201 

it was no thanks to King Charles that the Dutch 
did not win. 

The Dutch in the Medway 

If war were won by feasting, 

Or victory by song. 
Or safety found in sleeping sound, 

How England would be strong! 
But honour and dominion 

Are not maintained so. 
They're only got by sword and shot, 

And this the Dutchmen know! 

The moneys that should feed us 

You spend on your delight; 
How can you then have sailor-men 

To aid you in your fight? 
Our fish and cheese are rotten. 

Which makes the scurvy grow — 
We cannot serve you if we starve. 

And this the Dutchmen know! 

Our ships in every harbour 

Be neither whole nor sound. 
And, when we seek to mend a leak. 

No oakum can be found, 
Or, if it is, the caulkers, 

And carpenters also. 
For lack of pay, have gone away. 

And this the Dutchmen know! 



202 CHARLES II 

Mere powder, guns, and bullets 

We scarce can get at all. 
Their price was spent in merriment 

And revel at Whitehall, 
While we in tattered doublets. 

From ship to ship must row. 
Beseeching friends for odds and ends — 

And this the Dutchmen know! 

No king will heed our warnings. 

No Court will pay our claims — 
Our King and Court for their disport 

Do sell the very Thames! 
For, now De Ruyter's topsails 

Off naked Chatham show, 
We dare not meet him with our fleet — 

And this the Dutchmen know! 



There were some fearful drawn battles, both 
in the North Sea and the Channel. Once the 
Dutch sailed into the Thames and the Medway 
and burned a lot of our ships at Chatham. But 
the main result of these wars was that the Dutch 
gave up to us their colony in North America, 

New which was henceforth to be called New York. 
In the same reign "North and South Carolina" 
were added to our American list of states; they 
lie south of Virginia, are hot and swampy, and 
produce mainly rice and tobacco. 

Other Besides these Colonies we possessed several 

Colonies. . 

valuable West Indian Islands, notably Jamaica, 



OTHER COLONIES 203 

which grew sugar; we had a whale-fishing and 
fur-trading station in Hudson's Bay, north- 
ward from the French settlements in Canada; 
we had several little dots of land protected 
by forts on the west coast of Africa, whence 
we imported black slaves to our own and the 
Spanish colonies; and, in India, we had Bombay 
and Madras. The "East India Company" 
had been founded to trade with the Far East 
(from which the Dutch had steadily driven out 
the first European traders, the Portuguese), 
as far back as the end of Elizabeth's reign. 
Dutch, Frenchmen, and Englishmen scrambled 
against each other to get permission, from the 
"Great Moguls" and other Eastern Kings with 
magnificent names, to sell and buy in those 
countries; and, on the whole, during the seven- 
teenth century the English company got the 
best of trade with Hindostan into its hands. 
So you see the seeds of a great empire were 
already sown, and the colonial trade made 
English merchants both rich and very ad- 
venturous. 

I wish I could say as much good for Charles Parties in 
II's reign at home as abroad, but I cannot, ment. 
And this is mainly because in his reign we feel 
that England had ceased to be united, and 
seemed to have little chance of recovering its 
unity. The notion that "all Kings are trying 



204 CHARLES 11 

to oppress all peoples," seems to have grown 
up; it was the outcome of the Civil War. 
So there are now two "parties", in Parliament 
and even in the nation. There are the party 
of the King and his ministers and the party of 
those who are not his ministers, but would 
like to be. These parties were then called 
'™fd "Tories" and "Whigs;" in our days they call 
"Tory." themselves "Conservatives" and "Liberals" 
(or "Radicals"). Each was supposed to rep- 
resent certain principles of government; the 
Tories were for Church and Crown and gentle- 
men; the Whigs for dissenters, for trade, and 
for all who would bully the King. 

Tories were supposed to be against all changes 
Their jn laws or institutions; the Whigs were sup- 
tended posed to favour moderate and slow changes 
cipE of law. Both professed to be utterly loyal to 
the Constitution — i.e., to government by King, 
Lords, and Commons. But neither was really 
true to its original principles. The Whigs 
originally favoured a vast empire, and the 
careful protection of British trade, by war if 
necessary, especially by war with Catholic 
France, whereas the Tories were all for a French 
alliance and despised trade and colonies. Now- 
adays things have reversed themselves; and it 
is the Conservatives (or Tories) who want to 
protect British trade, to keep a large Army and 



GOVERNMENT BY "PARTY" 205 

Navy always ready for war, and to win the love 

of our brothers in the Colonies. Each party 

has constantly taken a different view of what 

the exact needs of Britain are, and each has 

exaggerated its own view, out of rivalry with 

the other party. 

And this has been unfortunate; for it has too Govern- 
ment by 

often made the leaders of each party tell lies "Party." 
to the people of Great Britain, in order to get 
their friends elected to Parliament, and them- 
selves to office as the King's ministers. For 
you will see, if you reflect, that, when every 
law and every grant of money has to be passed 
by both houses of Parliament, it would be of 
no use to a king to have Whig ministers if there 
was a Tory majority in the House of Commons; 
a king who wanted to govern well and without 
quarrels must take ministers from the party 
which, for the time, has the upper hand in the 
House of Commons. In those days the House 
of Commons was chosen by a very small body 
of electors; now it is chosen by almost all the 
grown-up men in Great Britain. But the 
principle was the same then as now; a king who, 
perhaps, wanted to make a " Whig " war or carry 
a '*Whig" law might suddenly find himself, 
after the election of a new Parliament, face to 
face with a "Tory" House of Commons, and 
so he would have to dismiss his Whig ministers. 



206 CHARLES II 

take Tory ministers, and drop his "Whig" 
war or his "Whig" law. No doubt it has 
made kings govern according to what was 
supposed to be the wish of their people for the 
time being; but, in the first place, a people as 
a whole seldom wishes the same thing for 
many years on end, and does not by any means 
always wish what is best for the country; in 
the second place, the system leads to friction 
and quarrel between parties, and so to waste 
of power and lack of union in the nation. 
Question All this was ouly beginning in Charles II 's 
Succes- reign, but it was beginning, and it was going 
^^°"' to go on and get worse. It has gone on and 
got worse every day until now. In Charles 
II's time Parliament was constantly the scene 
of fierce party disputes, mainly upon religion. 
Charles had no lawful sons, and his heir was his 
brother James, who after the death of his first 
wife had become a Catholic and married an 
Italian Catholic lady; Charles himself was 
accused of favouring Catholics, even of being 
secretly a Catholic. Wild stories were started 
^ The and believed of "Popish plots" to kill Charles 
'piot," and set up James. (Charles, who was perhaps 
the most genuinely humorous of all our kings, 
said to his brother, "Dear James, no one would 
be such a fool as to kill me in order to make you 
King.") The Whigs got up a plan to shut out 



DEATH OF CHARLES II 207 

James from the succession and to set up a 
bastard son of Charles in his place; in 1680- 
1681 it looked almost like a civil war between 
Tories and Whigs. But all moderate men 
dreaded this, and the King played his game so 
cleverly that, when he died in 1685, his brother ^f^^^ «* 
James succeeded him without trouble. Charles ii, i685. 
had taken sharp vengeance on some of the 
Whig plotters, and their families did not forget 
the fact. 

James II, however, was not merely the les^s;^^' 
Catholic King of a strongly Protestant people, ^i^ ^^a- 
but he was also the most obstinate man in 
England. If not, like Edward II, a crowned 
ass, he was at least a crowned mule. In three 
years he had wrecked his own throne, and very 
nearly pulled down the ancient monarchy of 
England on the top of himself. His Parlia- 
ment was quite loyal and quite prepared to shut 
its eyes to his Catholic faith, if he would not ^is 

n ' ' J p T» *» Catholic 

flaunt it m every one s face. But, from the faith. 
very first, he set himself not only to do this, 
but to make the Catholics supreme in the 
State. He wished to give them all posts in 
Army, Navy and Civil Service, and even in the 
Church of England. He thought that by prom- He tries 
ising to abolish all laws against the Protestant the ml- ^ 
Dissenters he might get them to help him to igg?'^^ 
abolish the laws against the Catholics also. 



208 JAMES II 

But the Dissenters, who certainly had never 
loved the Church of England, feared a Catholic 
king much more, and altogether refused to 
listen to James; they threw in their lot with 
those very churchmen and bishops who had 
bullied them. In Ireland, James appealed to 
the wildest passions of the Irish against the 
Protestant colonies of Englishmen which had 
been planted there by Elizabeth, by James I 
and by Cromwell, and who had been confirmed 
in their lands by Charles II. To the one person 
who could perhaps have helped him to put 
down England by the sword — namely. King 
Louis of France — this crowned mule turned a 
deaf ear, and professed that he wanted no such 
help. In short, he listened to nobody but a few 
Catholic priests in his own household. 

Question Until 1688 his heir had been his eldest 
Succes- daughter, the good and beloved Princess Mary, 
sion. ^jjQ j^^^j been married in 1677 to her Dutch 
cousin. Prince William of Orange, who was now 
the leader of Protestant Europe against the 
King of France. Most Englishmen were con- 
tent to wait till James should die; then this 
darling Protestant girl would be their queen. 

Birth of But in June, 1688, James had a son born to 
James him, who would, of course, be brought up as 

^'^Tess'. ^ Papist. The whole nation shivered at the 
prospect; its leaders. Whig and moderate 



THE PRINCE OF ORANGE 209 

Tory alike, would wait no longer, and a secret 
message was at once despatched to Prince Wil- 
liam beffging him to come over to England, The in- 
either to turn out King James or to teach him to the 
by force (for nothing but force would ever p^nce of 
convince such a character) to govern better. ^gjg.^^' 

Prince William of Orange was the son of 
Charles I's daughter Mary. He was a frail ^g^^^^^'^" 
little creature, nearly always ill, with an enor- WiiUamof 
mous hook-nose and cold gray eyes, which 
only lighted up in battle. His manners were 
also cold and unkind; but underneath all he 
had a soul of fire. He cared for but one thing 
on earth, to smash King Louis of France. He 
saw that rich England had been, since Crom- 
well's time, too much the ally of France, too 
much the enemy of Holland. He thought she 
had played false to Protestantism. If he came 
to England to deliver it from King James, he 
meant afterward to throw the whole weight 
and wealth of England into the alliances which 
he was forever knitting together against his 
hated enemy, France. For English "poli- 
tics" and the English Constitution, for the 
squabble of Whigs and Tories in the English 
Parliament, he cared nothing at all. But he 
was the husband of the heiress of England, and 
here was his chance of power. 

Men went about saying that the child just 



210 JAMES II 

"^Tmi- ^^^^ *^ King James was not his son at all. 
Ham, was no true Prince of Wales, "he had been 
smuggled into the Palace in a warming pan" — 
and much other nonsense of that sort. It 
suited William to believe this, or to pretend to 
believe it. James was well warned of what 
was coming, but he shut his ears, and so was 
quite unready to meet William and his Dutch 
fleet, which had a lot of English and Scottish 
soldiers and exiles on board it. William landed 
in Devonshire and moved slowly toward Lon- 
don. James had an army, many of whose reg- 
iments would have fought faithfully for him 
Flight of if he would only have led them; but he turned 
1688! tail and fled to France; and just before Christ- 
mas, 1688, William entered London. 
Who is to What was to be done? Was James still 

be King? 

K.mg? Had Mary become Queen.? Who was 
to call a Parliament ? (Only a King can do this, 
and it seemed as if there was no King.) Wil- 
liam, however, called a "Convention" (which 
was a Parliament in all but name), and, after 
some debate, this body decided that James was 
no longer King, but that William and Mary were 

Tii^aSi i^^^^ King and Queen of England and Ireland. 

Mary II, A Scottish Convcution declared the same thing 
for Scotland. A document was drawn up called 
the "Bill of Rights" which is a sort of second 
edition of Magna Charta. It fully expresses 



THE REVOLUTION OF 1688-9 211 

the idea that the Sovereign of England is a J/^^fjJJg 
"Hmited monarch" and that there are a great i689. 
many things he may not do. 

This "Revolution of 1688" was mainly the The Re- 
work of the Whigs, and William has often been oneS. 
called the "Whig Deliverer." Revolutions are 
bad things, but it is difficult to see how this one 
could have been avoided. James was a real 
tyrant, almost as impossible a King for Eng- 
lishmen as John or "Bloody" Mary I had been; 
and, since Mary II refused to reign without her 
husband, and the baby Prince of Wales had 
fled with his father, the question was perhaps 
settled in the only satisfactory manner. But 
England was by no means united by the settle- 
ment; William was a foreigner and a foreigner 
he remained till his death. 



CHAPTER X 

WILLIAM III TO GEORGE II 1688- 
1760; THE GROWTH OF EMPIRE 

"Brown Bess." 

In the days of lace-ruffles, perukes and brocade 
Brown Bess was a partner whom none could 
despise — 
An out-spoken, flinty-lipped, brazen-faced jade 
With a habit of looking men straight in the 
eyes — 
At Blenheim and Ramillies fops would confess 
They were pierced to the heart by the charms 
of Brown Bess. 

Though her sight was not long and her weight 

was not small. 
Yet her actions were winning, her language 

was clear; 
And every one bowed as she opened the ball 
On the arm of some high-gaitered, grim 

grenadier. 
Half Europe admitted the striking success 
Of the dances and routs that were given by 

Brown Bess. 

212 




■Ll.irJGTON'5 TIMK 




.a — - -y^ff 

WR.LBOR.Oi;C.K !S DAYS 



"BROWN BESS" 213 

When ruffles were turned into stiff leather 
stocks, 
And people wore pigtails instead of perukes. 
Brown Bess never altered her iron-gray locks; 
She knew she was valued for more than her 
looks. 
*'0h, powder and patches was always my dress. 
And I think I am killing enough," said Brown 
Bess. 



So she followed her red-coats, whatever they 

did. 
From the heights of Quebec to the plains of 

Assaye, 
From Gibraltar to Acre, Cape Town and 

Madrid, 
And nothing about her was changed on the 

way; 
(But most of the Empire which now we possess. 
Was won through those years by old-fashioned 

Brown Bess). 



In stubborn retreat or in stately advance, 
From the Portugal coast to the cork-woods 
of Spain, 
She had puzzled some excellent Marshals of 
France 
Till none of them wanted to meet her again: 
But later, near Brussels, Napoleon, no less. 
Arranged for a Waterloo ball with Brown 
Bess. 



214 WILLIAM III 

She had danced till the dawn of that terrible 

day — 
She danced on till dusk of more terrible 

night, 
And before her linked squares his battalions 

gave way 
And her long fierce quadrilles put his lancers 

to flight. 
And when his gilt carriage drove off in the press, 
"I have danced my last dance for the world!" 

said Brown Bess. 

If you go to Museums — there's one in White- 
hall — 
Where old weapons are shown with their 
names writ beneath, 

You will find her, upstanding, her back to the 
wall. 
As stiff as a ramrod, the flint in her teeth. 

And if ever we English have reason to bless 

Any arm save our mothers', that arm is Brown 
Bess ! 

^WiTiam "^^^ ^ill ^* Rights had said that "to keep an 

III and Army in time of peace was against Law." 

1689-94,' Only the fact that England was at war for very 

Ham III loiig periods during the next hundred years 

S4- saved the Army from being abolished; and at 

1702. every interval of peace it was reduced far too 

much for the safety of the country. In 1689 

war with France was certain, for, as I told you, 

William had come to England mainly to in- 



JAMES II DEFEATED IN IRELAND 215 

duce England to help Holland and other coun- 
tries whom France was threatening. Also the 
French King at once took up the cause of James. 

James went to Ireland and called on the James 
Catholic Irish to help him; French troops and Cathoiic 
money were sent after him. Ireland had now irefand 
some real wrongs to avenge, for Cromwell's 
conquest had been cruel, and many old Irish 
families had lost their lands, to make room for 
English settlers; these Catholics, therefore, 
gave James a good army, with which, early in 
1689, he advanced to try and subdue the most 
Protestant of the Irish Provinces, Ulster. 
But he failed to take the city of Londonderry, Siege of 
which held out against a most awful siege for derry, 
three months and more. It was not till a year 
after this that William was able to muster 
enough English and Dutch troops to begin 
the reconquest of Ireland. He smashed James 
to pieces at the Battle of the Boyne, and f^^^^^ °^ 
drove him once more into exile in 1690; a Boyne, 
year later the war ended with the surrender of 
Limerick, which the Catholics had defended 
as bravely as the Protestants had defended 
Londonderry. Ireland was at last completely 

conquered. Cruel laws 

William wanted to give, and promised to iJsh^^* 
give, the defeated Irish Catholics peace and ^ggj"^^*^®' 
protection; but the English Parliament in- i7io. 



f -> WILLIAM III 

tended that those who provoked the war 
should pay the expenses of the war. A vast 
number of estates were therefore again taken 
from the CathoHcs and given to the Protestants, 
and a fresh set of grievances began for Ireland. 
Harsh laws were also passed in this and the 
next reign, both in the English and Irish Par- 
liaments, with the intention of stamping out 
The laws h^q CathoHc relifijiou altogether. They were 

never o cj v 

enforced, hardly ever put in force, for the whole Irish 

agafnst pcoplc, Catholic and Protestant alike, hated 

trade! t^em; and men, after what they had gone 

through, only wished to live at peace with their 

neighbours. Harsh laws were also passed and 

had been passed since 1660 in the English 

Parliament against Irish trade; for the jealous 

English merchants feared that Irishmen would 

make woollen goods, or grow fat bacon, beef, 

or butter cheaper than England could do. 

These laws were put in force; and their result 

in the long run was to make Ireland ripe for 

rebellion. 

Laws The same jealousy was displayed toward 

ScSS Scotland, which was just beginning to have 
trade. ^ few Small manufactures of its own, and which 
certainly grew excellent and cheap beef and 
mutton. Then, too, there was a large party 
which had clung to King James or was ready 
to rise for him, especially in the wild Highlands 



UNION WITH SCOTLAND 217 

north of the Forth and Clyde. The south 
and east of Scotland had accepted the Rev- 
olution of 1688, and the Presbyterian Church 
had again been established. The risings for 
King James were put down, though not with- 
out tough fighting. But when Scotland asked 
to be allowed a share in the trade with our 
colonies, the English Parliament answered 
with a contemptuous "no"; and the result was 
that Scotland growled and growled more and 
more throughout the reign of William. But The 
in the next reign, after long and fierce debates, ^f^^^ 
the old Scottish Parliament was induced to Scotland, 

1708 

vote for union with the English (1708); and 
henceforward there was one united Parliament 
of Great Britain, and trade was perfectly free 
between the two nations. Then began the 
great commercial prosperity of Modern Scot- 
land. Within fifty years Glasgow had got an 
enormous share of the trade with the British 
Colonies and India, and one of the most inter- 
esting tales of town history is the story how the 
grave merchants of Glasgow got together and 
set to work to deepen the river Clyde so as to 
make it carry the trade which they knew would 
come. The first Glasgow ship for tobacco 
sailed to America ten years after the union, and 
began what is still one of Glasgow's greatest 
industries. 



218 WILLIAM III 

The war William III paid far too little attention to 
Franc? t^cse questions of Ireland and Scotland, but 
1689-97. his excuse was that he and his Dutch and 
German allies were engaged in a desperate 
struggle to save Flanders and the line of the 
river Rhine from King Louis of France. With 
great difficulty could he squeeze out of the 
English Parliament men and money for these 
wars. None of the English statesmen, Whigs 
or Tories, really liked the war, and the Tories 
in particular began to dislike the Revolution 
which they had helped to make. But wher- 
ever the English regiments fought they covered 
themselves with glory, especially at Steinkirk 
Jealousy (1692), and Landen (1693), though they were 
.,^^^^°f,^ defeated in both battles. William was a fierce 

the army 

in Eng- and dogged fighter, but he was not a first-rate 
general, and France had still the upper hand 
when a sort of truce was concluded in 1697. 
Parliament, in which the Tories then had the 
upper hand, at once reduced the army to 
7,000 men. 

This was most foolish, as every one knew that 
old King Louis XIV was only preparing for 
a fresh war in order to put his own grandson 
on the throne of Spain, which fell vacant in 
1700. The Austrians also claimed the Spanish 
crown, and it was the plain duty of England 
to help them. Many Englishmen, however, 



QUESTION OF THE SUCCESSION 219 

said, *'No, let them fight it out. What does 
it matter to England? This« is what comes 
of your foreign king," and so on. William, 
foreigner as he was, knew better. The growing 
power of France threatened every nation in 
Europe. The time had gone by when England 
could afford to stand aside from the quarrels 
of her neighbours. 

William might, however, have failed al- Death (^ 
together to convince Englishmen of this if in exile; 
Louis had not made one great mistake. Old ti^h^^^^ 
King James II died in 1701, and Louis at once f^Qgfj^g 
recognized his son (the same Prince of Wales 
who was born in 1688) as "James III." This 
was the same as dictating to Englishmen who 
should be their king; and the whole nation 
voted for war at once. William would have 
led it to battle as bravely as ever but for his 
death in 1702. His good wife, Mary, had died 
childless seven years before, and her sister Question 
Anne now became Queen. But Anne, too, was cession"^' 
now childless, and so, to find an heir of the old ^^^^°" 
royal blood who was also a Protestant, England 
would have to go back a long way, in fact to 
the descendants of James I. James I's daughter 
Elizabeth had married a German Prince, and 
that Elizabeth's youngest child, Sophia of 
Hanover, a very old lady, was the best Prot- 
estant heir. She had already a son and a 



220 ANNE 

grandson, who were one day to be King George 
I and King George II. No one liked the pros- 
pect of a petty German prince as our king, 
but most people thought anything was better 
than a Papist, and unfortunately our lawful 
King, James III, remained a Papist all his 
days. He could have bought his throne at 
any moment by turning Protestant, but he was 
far too honourable to do that. 
Pariia- Before we leave King William we must 
comes all uotice an important change which took place 
powerful, j^pjng his rcigu, a change which really trans- 
ferred the sovereignty of the country from King 
to Parliament. To previous kings Parliament 
had usually voted, at the beginning of the reign. 
Taxes, a Certain sum of money to be paid each year out 
of taxes, which sum, they thought, should be 
enough to pay all the expenses of governing 
and defending the country. It never was 
enough, and extra money had always to be 
voted for wars. Now, however, William's 
Parliament voted him only a small sum for 
his life — enough for himself and his court 
"to live on"; but the expenses of governing 
and defending the country, paying the Army 
and Navy and Civil Service, they only voted 
from year to year. So since his time the kings 
have always been obliged to call a Parliament 
every year whether they wanted to or 



THE NATIONAL DEBT 221 

not — or else to leave Army and Navy without 
pay. 

Further, as William's wars cost a great deal Loans and 

the Na- 

01 money, and as Parliament shrank irom lay- tionai 
ing on the heavy taxes which were necessary 
to pay for them, it allowed the Crown to borrow 
money from any one who would lend it at 
interest. The interest had to be paid yearly 
till the loan was repaid. Few such loans ever 
were repaid, and so a perpetual debt was 
created called the "National Debt," which 
has now increased to an enormous amount. 
But people are always glad to lend money to 
the Crown, because they know they will get 
the interest on it paid quite punctually. As 
long as we pay the interest on this National 
Debt we are still paying for some of King 
William's wars and for those of all later 
sovereigns; but we need not grumble, because,, 
if these great wars had not been fought, there 
would have been no British Colonies or Empire, 
and probably no independent Great Britain; 
our country would have been a province of 
France. So let King William sleep in peace. 

Queen Anne's wars were going to be very Anne, 
successful indeed, though they continued till her^ ' 
the last year of her reign. She herself was 
almost the stupidest woman in her dominions; 
but she was a good and kindly soul, devoted 



charac- 
ter. 



222 ANNE 

to the Church of England, and had generally 
the sense to leave affairs of State to her min- 
isters. She called herself a Tory, and her 
ministers called themselves Tories; but they 
were going to fight a "Whig War." By this 
I mean a war to maintain the Protestant 
Kings in England, and to increase the trade 
The Duke and Empire of England. And so they really 
borough, had to act as Whigs. The hero of that war was 
John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough, the 
greatest soldier England ever produced. He 
was not only great in planning a campaign and 
in fighting a battle, but also in his care for his 
soldiers, their food, their clothing, their com- 
fort and their pay. Also he was very clever 
at keeping the allies of Great Britain united. 
These allies — Dutch, Austrians, and Ger- 
mans, were very difficult to manage; for each 
The war thought mainly of their own interests, and 
Spanish quarrcllcd with the others continually. But 
^""sS Marlborough thought of only one thing — 
1702-13. Ijq^ ^q hesit the French, and very handsomely 
Battles of did hc beat them. At Blenheim (1704), Ram- 
heim, eti. ilHcs (1706), Oudeuarde (1708), Malplaquet 
(1709), he won victories as complete as those of 
Edward III and Henry V. And our redcoats 
were foremost in all these battles and won 
immortal glory. By 1710 we had swept the 
French out of Germany and Flanders, and were 



THE WAR IN THE COLONIES 223 
well on the road to Paris. Our Navy had been Jhe war 

m the 

equally successful; we had beaten a great Colonies. 
French fleet off Malaga in Spain, and had 
taken Gibraltar and the Isle of Minorca. In 
America our colonists, with little aid from home, 
had begun to bite away the frontier of the 
French colony of Canada. All looked like 
ending in a Treaty of Peace of great glory 
for Great Britain. 

But in Great Britain itself things were not Parties in 
going so well. "Politics" had now become a ment. 
sort of unpleasant cheating game between a 
lot of great families of the nobility, Whigs on 
one side, Tories on the other. Each party 
strove to control the House of Commons by 
getting its own friends elected to it, and thus 
to get itself into office. The Tories, who were 
also the "High Church" men, hated, or pre- 
tended to hate, the war and the Duke of Marl- 
borough. They said, "It is a Whig war, a 
war for the interests of the merchants, many 
of them Dissenters too, the brutes! It is a 
war for foreigners. It is all the fault of those 
who made that wicked Revolution of 1688 and 
turned out our natural King. Anne, of course, 
is a native, but who is to come after her ? — a 
disgusting, fat German!" 

Moreover, the war was expensive, and, what- 
ever ministers may pretend, no one likes paying 



224 ANNE 

Tories in taxcs. So thcsc men got the ear of the electors, 

power* 

1710. and a Tory Parliament came in determined to 
Peace of end the war at any price. The Duke of Marl- 
^^Ttis! borough was accused of prolonging it for his 
own reasons, and being bribed by foreigners to 
do so. Of course this was ridiculous nonsense, 
but he was dismissed from the command, and 
in 1713 peace with France was concluded at 
the Treaty of Utrecht, and Great Britain openly 
deserted her allies. 

Yet so great had been our victories that this 

British treaty of Utrecht could not fail to be of great 

^^"^' advantage to us. It was, in the eyes of all 

Europe, the foundation of the British Empire. 

It was like a notice-board: . . 

THERE IS A BRITISH EMPIRE: 

FOREIGNERS 

PLEASE TAKE NOTICE AND KEEP 

OFF IT 

For we kept not only Gibraltar and Minorca, 
which were the beginnings of the power of 
our fleet in the Mediterranean, but also Nova 
Scotia and Newfoundland, which had been 
the outworks of French Canada. Also we 
secured certain definite rights to trade with the 
Spanish colonies in South America. It was on 
trade the Empire was founded, and by trade 
it must be maintained. But, remember, a 



FRANCE AND SPAIN ms 

great trade needs a great defence by a great 
fleet and a great army. One gets nothing for 
nothing in this world. 

Yet old King Louis XIV had won his point; f;^"^^ 
his grandson kept the throne of Spain, to Spain. 
prevent which we had originally begun to fight. 
He did, indeed, give up the "Low Countries" 
(which in the Middle Ages we called "Flanders" 
and now call Belgium) to our Austrian ally; 
and the French and Spanish crowns were not 
united on the same head, which was what we 
had most feared. But the alliance of France 
and Spain remained, with hardly an inter- 
ruption, a serious danger for us until 1808; and 
we had to fight four great wars against that 
alliance if we were to remain an Empire at all. 

In Anne's last years, the question again TheSuc- 

1 - ^ cession 

came up — who was to succeed her.^ The Question 
Tories, who were in power, were almost inclined 
to say James III, in spite of his being a Papist. 
But "almost" is not "quite"; and while the 
Tories talked the Whigs were ready to act, 
and, on Anne's death in 1714, George I became 
King. A Scottish rising on behalf of James a German 
in 1715 was put down with some difficulty; George i, 
and the result was that both English and ^"^i*-*^- 
Scottish Tories remained sore and disloyal for 
many years, always with half an eye to the 
"King over the water." 



226 GEORGE I 

„., . '^^.^ The Whigs, however, got their King, a dull, 
powerful, honest, heavy fellow, and they allowed him 
no power whatever. All the ofl&cers of State 
were divided among a few great Whig families. 
George cared nothing for England, only for 
his native Hanover. The churchmen growled. 
Small in- the couutrv gentlemen growled; but the Dis- 

fluenceof t i • • i i i 

the Ger- seutcrs and merchants rejoiced, and made 
kSgs. haste to become very rich. Ordinary quiet 
persons agreed to accept King George, but with- 
out enthusiasm . Affection for King and Crown 
entirely died away until it was revived by the 
wonderful goodness and high spirit of the great 
Queen Victoria. 

There is practically nothing to record of the 

reign of George I. The only important law 

The "Sep- passed was one which said there shall be a 

tenmal -^ -,. • j p 

Act," new Parliament every seven years, instead oi 
every three years. Abroad there is nothing 
interesting either. France, which had been 
very hard hit by the war, only wanted peace. 
The new King of Spain occasionally growled at 
our holding Gibraltar, and twice tried to take 
it from us; which was unlucky for him, as we 
blew his fleet into the air. 
George II, Gcorgc I died in 1727, and the first few years 
his cha- of the reign of his son, George II, were almost 
as quiet as the late reign had been. The new 
King was a short, ridiculous, red-faced person. 



WAR WITH SPAIN 227 

with great goggle-eyes. He cared as little 
for England and as much for Hanover as his 
father; but he had fought bravely in Marl- 
borough's wars when he was young, and was 
always longing to fight somebody. He at 
least knew how to swear in English, and he 
was rather too fond of swearing. His prime 
minister, till 1742, was Sir Robert Walpole, 
who had ruled his father since 1721. This sir 
man, though he shockingly neglected the Army Waipoie, 
and the Navy, managed money matters re- Minster, 
markably well; and the result was that our i'^2i-42; 
trade increased enormously. 

But the price of his neglect of the fighting his neg- 
services had soon to be paid. France, when army and 
she had recovered from Marlborough's wars, ^^^^' 
made a close alliance with Spain, and in 1737 
Spain began to attack our trade in America. 
Sorely against his will, Walpole had to declare 
war on Spain to defend that trade. France War with 
came to Spain's assistance and the war then 1739, and 

1 • Ta * i? i France, 

grew much more serious, it was, m tact, a 1740. 
struggle for power and empire both in America 
and India and lasted for eight or nine years; 
and, as our old Austrian and Dutch allies were 
also attacked by France, she had to send soldiers 
to Germany and Flanders as well, though she 
could ill spare them, for it was quite possible 
that our own island might be invaded. Un- 



228 GEORGE II 

We hire fortunately, we could hire, with our abundant 

German -^ . . , . ^-v i ^ r^ 

soldiers. British guiueas, Dutch and Cjerman troops to 

fight our battles for us. I cannot imagine 

a worse plan than this for any country, but it 

remained a regular British habit down to our 

grandfathers' days; and it still further increased 

the unwillingness of our own people to serve 

in their own army. 

Party Walpolc was dreadfully badgered in Par- 

bies. liament over the badness of this plan, and over 

many other things, not so much by the few 

remaining Tory members as by those Whigs 

who were not actually in office, but wanted to 

get into office. And when they did come in, 

they had no better plans to propose. Walpole 

resigned in 1742, and his successor, Carteret, 

a far greater man than Walpole, was badgered 

almost worse, until he too resigned in 1744. 

Battles of Mcauwhilc King George himself had led British 

gen, 1743^ troops to a great victory at Dettingen in Ger- 

^° tenoyi many, and his second son, the Duke of Cum- 

1745. berland, led them to a defeat almost as glorious 

at Fontenoy in Flanders, 1745. The French 

King had been seriously thinking of an invasion 

of Britain on behalf of the exiled King James 

III. But the French were justly afraid of 

Prince risking their ships against the British navy; 

Edward and SO Priucc Charles Edward, son of James 

*° land" III, resolved to strike for himself even without 




KING GEORGE AT DETTINGEN 



THE REBELLION OF 1745 229 

French help. He landed, with seven followers 
only, in the Western Highlands of Scotland 
in the summer of 1745. 

He called upon the well-known loyalty of Rising of 
the Highlanders to his family; they answered tishHiJh- 
him as only Highlanders can. Without guns f^'^^ll 
or cavalry, five or six thousand of these men ^^ii^d 

Stuart 

made themselves masters of all Scotland. They King, 
could march two miles for every one that the 
heavily laden English soldiers could march; 
and of course there were far too few of these 
regular soldiers in Great Britain. When the 
Highlanders met them, they would fire one 
volley from their muskets, throw them down, 
and charge with the *' claymore," the terrible 
Highland sword. The English soldiers, of 
whom, indeed, the best regiments were abroad 
when the Rising began, seemed on this oc- 
casion to have forgotten all Marlborough's 
lessons; their generals were old, slow men; and 
the rank and file were terrified by the fero- 
cious Highland charges. So Charles was able, 
in the winter of 1745, with never more than 
six thousand men, to advance into England as 
far as Derby. The few great Tory families 
in England who were supposed to favour the 
cause of King James III ought now to have 
come forward and helped his son, but they did 
nothing. There was, indeed, a real panic in 



230 GEORGE II 

London; and, if no one rose for King James, 
very few people seemed anxious to fight for 
King George. If Charles had gone on then, 
he might have taken London, but he was per- 
suaded to turn back from Derby, and, in the 
Battle of following Spring, was defeated by Cumberland 
1746'. at Culloden in Inverness-shire. That was the 
end of the Stuart cause in Britain. Cumber- 
land swept the Highlands with fire and sword; 
and though he failed to catch Prince Charles, 
who, after five months' wandering, escaped to 
France, he prevented any further outbreak. 
Fierce vengeance was taken on the gentlemen 
who had risen, and there were many cruel 
^ executions which might well have been spared. 

M74o^8 '^^^ ^^^ ''^^^^ France had been fought in 
in America and India as well as in Germany and 
Scotland. In the outlaying parts of our 
Empire, there was hardly any peace between 
the rival colonists and traders, French and 
English, even though there might be peace 
in Europe. You must remember how vast 
were the spaces, how few the people, in the 
America of those days; how long, before the 
time of steamships and telegraphs, it took to 
get troops or even orders across the Atlantic. 
In bad weather two months was no uncommon 
time for a voyage from Bristol to New York; 
to Calcutta, six or seven months was quite 



WAR IN INDIA 231 

usual. The vast but empty French colony ^^^^^^ 
of Canada had not more than one sixth of the 
population of the British colonies in North 
America, then thirteen in number; but it was 
much better governed, fortified and equipped 
for war. Our colonists were never united 
amongst themselves, and did not want to be. 
They were none too loyal to the mother country, 
while the French Canadians were thoroughly 
loyal to France. That is why, between 1740 
and 1758, the French were able to press our 
people in America so hard. Their great 
object was to occupy the valleys of the great 
rivers of Ohio and Mississippi. These lay 
right behind our colonies; and if the French 
could have held them, the British colonists 
would have been prevented from expanding 
westward, which was just what they were 
doing more and more every year. 

In India things were not quite so bad. France The war 
had an "East India Company" like our own 1740-8.' 
for trading with the native states, and the two 
companies were natural rivals. Not far from 
our settlement of Madras lay the French settle- 
ment of Pondicherry; opposite to our Calcutta 
lay the French Chandernagore. Even when 
there was peace between France and England 
at home, the rival companies out there used 
to send their few white soldiers to help some 



232 GEORGE II 

native prince who happened to be at war with 
another native prince. They also took into 
their pay native Indians, whom we call Sepoys. 
They drilled and armed them with European 
weapons, and made them capital soldiers. 
An army of two or three hundred French or 
English soldiers, with perhaps two thousand 
Sepoys, would beat any native army you liked 
to name, even if it were fifty thousand strong. 
In the war of 1740-8 the French did succeed in 
taking Madras; but, before that war was over, 
Robert Major Stringer Lawrence and Robert Clive 
turned the tide of victory again. Clive, who 
began life as a clerk, was the real founder of 
the Indian Empire. When peace was made 

Treaty of in 1748 by the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, 

Chapeiie, Madras was restored to us. 

-"*^* In Europe nothing was settled by that 

peace; and in India and America there was 

hardly peace at all. We may cheerfully forget 

the dull and stupid Whig ministers who ruled 

England from 1744 to 1756, but in the latter 

William year Wilham Pitt took oflfice. And in 1757 he 

office, became an all-powerful war minister. England 

^'^^'^-^^- ^as then in a very bad way. 

^^o^the ^^^ ^^^ ^^^ ^^^^ begun again, and the 

country, latc miuistcrs had so obstinately refused to 

strengthen the Army or Navy that the King was 

forced to hire six thousand Germans to defend 



PITT SAVES GREAT BRITAIN 233 

the coast of Kent against an expected invasion! 
France had taken Minorca from us, and a very 
badly fitted-out British fleet, under Admiral 
Byng, had failed to rescue it. The fault 
was the Minister's, who had neglected the 
Navy, but the Nation was angry with the 
Admiral, and, to save trouble to the Ministry, 
Byng was tried and shot on his own ship. 

Pitt changed all this very quickly. He called p^^ saves 
upon the Nation outside Parliament, upon Britain.* 
Tory and Whig alike; and while he was War 
Minister these evil party names seemed to have 
lost their meaning. The spirit of the Nation, now 
united as it had never been since the days of 
Elizabeth, rose to his call. He terrified the 
quarrelsome House of Commons until it voted 
him whatever he asked for in the way of men, 
money, and ships; he put the militia for home 
defence on a new footing; he doubled the 
regular army, and enrolled whole regiments of 
those very Highlanders who, eleven or twelve 
years before, had been fighting against King 
George at home. He doubled the number of 
our ships of war. As our old ally, Austria, Our ally, 

Frederick 

had gone over to the French, Pitt made a of 
warm friend of the new German power, the iS-S'. 
King of Prussia; and, instead of borrowing 
from Germany troops to defend Britain, he 
sent regiment after regiment of British troops 



234 GEORGE II 

to help Prussia in Germany against France 

and Austria. 

The The war that began in 1756 was called the 

yHts' "Seven Years' War." It was far more clearly 

1756-63. ^ war for empire than any earlier one. "I will 

win America for us in Germany," was what 

Pitt said; and what he meant was that France, 

if thoroughly beaten in Germany, would be 

unable to spare troops to defend far-away 

Canada. But, being a thorough man, he also 

set about winning America in America itself. 

In He even persuaded the disloyal colonists to 

help us to fight their battles for them, and he 

paid them to do so. His huge and victorious 

fleet prevented the French from sending any 

help to Canada. That colonly did, indeed, 

defend itself down to 1760 with true French 

gallantry. But when, by an amazing piece 

of daring, our General Wolfe took Quebec, the 

Winning end was not far off. Three British armies, 

da, 1758- coming by different roads, gradually closed 

^^' round the Canadian capital of Montreal, and 

in 1760 all was over, and North America was 

British from the Polar ice to Cape Florida; the 

one little French settlement on the Gulf of 

Mexico, Louisiana, had lost all importance. 

_ The In India there is a similar story of conquest 

French . 

driven to bc told. Thcrc, the native princes had, on 
^T757-6o! the whole, inclined to the French side. One 



SECRET OF SEA POWER 235 

of them — Surajah Dowlah — took Calcutta 
in 1756, and allowed a number of English 
prisoners to be suffocated in a horrible dun- 
geon called the "Black Hole." Clive, with 
about two thousand Sepoys and Englishmen, 
came up from Madras to avenge this. He 
retook Calcutta, and won a victory, against 
odds of twenty -five to one, at Plassy in 1757. 
That victory extended the power of the East 
India Company far into Bengal. In the region 
of Madras our success was equally great; and 
in 1761 we took Pondicherry, and swept the 
French out of all India. All the native 
Princes at once went over to our side. 

What was it that sjave us, a nation of less ^te 

^ . secret of 

than eight millions of men, these amazing sea 
successes over a nation of at least twenty mil- p"^^""" 
lions, more naturally warlike, quite as brave, 
and much cleverer than ourselves? It was 
mainly one thing, sea 'power. The nation that 
commands the sea by having the greatest 
number of ships and the best-trained sailors 
will always beat its rivals in distant lands, 
simply because it commands the roads leading 
to those lands. If you look back to the begin- 
ning of things you will see that it was Cromwell, 
it was Elizabeth, nay, it was Henry VIII and 
Henry VII, who, by their early and wise care 
for our Navy, won for us America and India. 



236 GEORGE III 

We might, and we usually did, neglect our 

Navy in time of peace; but in time of war, it 

had got a mysterious habit of doubling itself, 

and of discovering great fighting sailors. In this 

war it had discovered three. Admiral Boscawen, 

Battles of y^}iQ beat ouc great French fleet at Lagos, and 

and Admiral Rodney, who played the same game 

^iS'. in the West Indies. Perhaps the most daring 

of all was Sir Edward Hawke, who, as Mr. 

Newbolt sings, "came swooping from the 

West" one wild November afternoon onto the 

French fleet off the rocky coast of Quiberon, 

and fought a night battle on a lee shore: 

Down upon the quicksands, roaring out 

of sight, 
Fiercely beat the storm wind, darkly fell 

the night. 
But they took the foe for pilot and the 

cannon's glare for light. 
When Hawke came swooping from the West! 

Death of Meanwhile old King George II had died in 

i76o'. 1760; and his grandson, George III, aged 

twenty-two, had become King. And now, 

George almost too latc, the Spaniards came to the 

' 1820. help of their French cousins. Pitt wanted 

to fly at them and smash them before they 

had time to declare war on us; but neither the 

new King nor the other ministers would agree to 




w 
o 

W 

pq 
I— I 

P 






I 



i 



WAR WITH SPAIN 237 

this; and Pitt, in a fit of anger, resigned his JJ^^'^"f^" 
ofiice. Yet even when Spain did declare war, Pitt,i76i. 
at the opening of 1762, the spirit which Pitt War with 
had given to the fighting services carried all 1762.' 
before it. We mopped up the remaining 
French West Indian Islands, and we took from 
the Spaniards their two richest colonies. Ha- 
vana in the Isle of Cuba, and Manila in the 
far Eastern seas. 

But when Pitt retired, the union of King, 
Ministers, Parliament and People, which had George 

ill. rc- 

lasted for five out of the seven years of war, solved to 
was at an end. George III had his very valiant whigr.^"^ 
but obstinate mind set on only one thing, to 
raise the power of the Crown, and to get free 
from the government of the great Whig families. 
He meant to take as ministers whom he pleased. 
He knew that he could not keep such ministers 
in office if the House of Commons was always 
against them; and so he set himself to bribe 
the members of that House. He would dis- 
tribute offices, pensions, and favours, to its 
members, until he had made a "Royal" party, 
which should oppose the "Whig" party. This 
Royal party would then vote with the min- 
isters whom the King would choose. It took 
George nearly ten years to do this; but he had 
a good deal of success in the end. And the 
nation outside Parliament felt some sympathy 



238 



GEORGE III 



Popu- for him; for every one knew how these great 
George Whig famiKes had kept all the richest jobs 
ch'arac- of the kingdom in their own hands. George 
^^^' was also very popular with the middle classes 
and the country gentlemen. In fact, he was 
a sort of Tory; and this new Royal party be- 
came a sort of new Tory party. George was 
at least a thorough Briton, brave, homely, 
dogged, and virtuous in his private life; but he 
was in such a hurry to carry out this political 
job, that he was quite ready to scuttle out of 
his glorious war, and desert his allies just as 
Anne's ministers had done in 1713. 
Peace of Yct, like the Treaty of Utrecht of 1713, the 
1763'. Treaty of Paris of 1763 could not fail to bring 
solid advantages to Great Britain. Though 
we gave back to Spain her rich colonies of 
Havana and Manila, and took from her only 
the useless American swamp, called Florida, 
we recovered Minorca. Though we gave back 
to France all her great and rich West Indian 
Islands, we retained several of the smaller ones; 
though we gave back to her her trading-stations 
in India, she had to promise never to fortify 
them again. And, finally, we kept our greatest 
conquest of all, Canada. 



CHAPTER XI 

THE AMERICAN REBELLION AND THE 

GREAT FRENCH WAR 1760-1815; 

REIGN OF GEORGE III 

'Twas not while England's sword unsheathed 

Put half a world to flight, 
Nor while their new-built cities breathed 

Secure behind her might; 
Not while she poured from Pole to Line 

Treasure and ships and men — 
These worshippers at Freedom's shrine 

They did not quit her then ! 

Not till their foes were driven forth 

By England o'er the main — 
Not till the Frenchman from the North 

Had gone, with shattered Spain; 
Not till the clean-swept ocean showed 

No hostile flag unrolled. 
Did they remember what they owed 

To Freed<)m — and were bold ! 

Soon after the peace of 1763, we began to 
perceive one result of the conquest of Canada 

V 239 



240 GEORGE III 

The which few people had expected. Our American 
of the colonies, having no French to fear any longer, 
cXS wanted to be free from our control altogether. 
1776. Xhey utterly refused to pay a penny of the two 
hundred million pounds that the war had 
cost us; and they equally refused to maintain a 
garrison of British soldiers. They intended 
to shake off all our restrictions on their trade, 
and to buy and sell in whatever market they 
could find. When our Parliament proposed 
in 1764 to make them pay a small fraction of 
the cost of the late war, they called it "oppres- 
sion," and prepared to rebel. " We are Whigs, " 
they said: "Whigs always resist oppression. 
You EngHsh Whigs did so in 1688." 
What the There were two results from this : In the 
Whigs first place, the great Whig families were already 
°<3^it. sore at King George's attempts to take his 
ministers without consulting them. And, when 
they saw the King and his ministers set upon 
compelling the Americans to pay the tax, 
they began to denounce the very things of 
which they had formerly been the champions, 
namely, the Empire, the Army, and the Navy. 
America was right, they said, to resist such 
"oppression." Even the great William Pitt, 
now Earl of Chatham, said this. And so the 
whole meanings of the words "Whig" and 
"Tory" were completely changed. The Whig 



WAR WITH AMERICA 241 

became a person who cared little for the Empire, 
and, occasionally, even supported the enemies 
of his country, just as the Tory of Anne's 
reign had done. And the Tories became, for 
a season, the true patriots, as the Whigs of 
Anne's reign had been. 

The second result was that we had to fight War with 
our colonies, and that we failed to beat them. 1775-82? 
It was a hopeless business from the first. The 
distance was too great, the spaces of America 
were too vast for us to hold by force, even if 
we had won in battle. The quarrels in our 
Parliament were too fierce to allow of success. 
We had no great minister at home, and no great 
general in America. The colonists called a The 
Congress at Philadelphia; declared themselves states of 
CO be independent; and in 1776 took the name^i^e"^*' 
of the "United States of America." Blood 
had already been shed when this happened. 
A real hero, patient, resourceful, and brave, 
called George Washington, commanded the 
American army. We never sent enough troops; 
we had not, in fact, enough troops to send. 
Though we often won battles, we suffered some 
very severe disasters. 

The Americans very soon sought French They 
help, and France was delighted at such a chance French 
of avenging her losses in the former war. The ^^^^' ^^^^' 
French fleet, though small, had been much 



242 GEORGE III 

improved since that war, and was able to draw 

away our ships from the coast of America to 

Naval all quarters of the world. We were iust able 

war with ipii p ■r\ • / ^h-' 

France, to defend the rest oi our Jb^mpire (except Mm- 
orca, which we now lost again) ; but not to beat 
our colonists at the same time. Spain, and 
even our ally Holland, soon joined France; 
and for a few months, we had the navies of 
all the world against us. So, when Lord Corn- 
wallis, with seven thousand men, was obliged 
to surrender to a French and American force 
at Yorktown in 1781, we determined to with- 
draw from America; after which, having our 
hands free, we finished the naval war victori- 
ously in other quarters of the world. Rodney 
smashed a great French fleet in the West 
Indies; and Lord Heathfield, at Gibraltar, 
beat off the siege of that rock, which had lasted 
for three years. By a treaty signed in 1783 
Peace of wc acknowledged the Independence of America, 
saiiiesi gavc back Florida and Minorca to Spain, and 
^'^^^- some small West Indian Islands, as well as 
Senegal in West Africa, to France. These were 
serious losses; yet France had been even harder 
hit by the war than we had been. She had hoped, 
in return for her help to receive valuable trad- 
ing privileges with America; but the Americans 
showed no more gratitude to her than they had 
previously shown to us, and she received none. 



WAR WITH AMERICA 243 

The snow lies thick on Valley Forge ^^*J^ *^® 

The ice on the Delaware, 
But the poor dead soldiers of King George 

They neither know nor care 

Not though the earliest primrose break 

On the sunny side of the lane. 
And scuffling rookeries awake 

Their England's spring again. 

They will not stir when the drifts are gone 

Or the ice melts out of the bay. 
And the men that served with Washington 

Lie all as still as they. 

They will not stir though the mayflower blows 

In the moist dark woods of pine. 
And every rock-strewn pasture shows 

Mullein and columbine. 

Each for his land, in a fair fight. 

Encountered, strove, and died. 
And the kindly earth that knows no spite 

Covers them side by side. 

She is too busy to think of war; 

She has all the world to make gay. 
And, behold, the yearly flowers are 

Where they were in our fathers' day ! 



244 GEORGE III 

Golden-rod by the pasture wall 
When the columbine is dead, 

And sumach leaves that turn, in fall. 
Red as the blood they shed. 

Factions AH this time there were fierce quarrels in 
Pariia- Parliament, between Whigs and Tories, on 

1764-83'. many questions besides the war. Every act 
of Government, good or bad, was torn to pieces 
and called "infamous" by the Whigs, some of 
whom sought for popularity by writing in the 
newspapers, and even by appealing to the 
passions of the London mob. That mob more 
than once broke loose and enjoyed some highly 
exciting riots, in suppressing which King George 
showed great personal courage. One of the 
Cry for cries raised at this time, both in and outside 

of HouS Parliament, was for a better representation 

of Com- ^£ ^Yie people of Britain in the House of Com- 



mons. 



mons. It was really a very reasonable cry, 
for the existing system was absurd. 
The By that system each county sent two mem- 
Bor- bers to Parliament, whatever its population. 
oughs." ^j^j jjj ^Yie counties only actual owners of land 
could vote at elections. You might be enor- 
mously rich and have a long lease of an enormous 
estate; but unless you owned land you had no 
vote. Then the boroughs, which also sent two 
members each, were still the same towns which 



PARLIAMENTARY REFORM 245 

had sent members to the Tudor Parliaments. 
From many of these towns, all trade, riches and 
importance had long departed, and some bor- 
oughs had hardly any inhabitants at all! 
Side by side with these were great cities grown 
and growing up, which sent no members to Par- 
liament. Now, if the Tories had been wise, 
they would have taken up this question, and 
made a proper and moderate "reform" of the 
House of Commons. The Whigs, who called 
themselves "champions of the people," could 
hardly with decency have opposed it. But 
when William Pitt, the younger son of the wiiiiam 
great Minister of the Seven Years' War, took younger. 
up the question in 1785, he could get very little 
support from his own party. So this question 
fell into the hands of noisy agitators outside 
Parliament, who cried out for a "Radical 
Reform," and got the name of "Radicals." 

The ten years that followed the peace of His first 

. , . . ministry, 

1783 were years of great prosperity m Britain. i784- 
The Americans continued to trade with us as 
before, though, of course, we could no longer 
compel them to do so. Our Indian Empire 9"f- 

111 1 • 1 ' 1 Indian 

had been enormously increased since 1761 by Empire. 
Clive and Warren Hastings, and by a long 
line of heroic soldiers and statesmen. The 
East India Company was now a sovereign 
power, and the greatest military power in India. 



246 GEORGE III 

Parliament had begun to take notice of it, not 
always favourable or wise notice, and passed 
laws to help it to govern its territories. The 
Crown now appointed a Governor-General, 
a council, and judges for British India. One 
of the favourite tricks of the Whigs was to 
accuse the Company and its agents of cruelty, 
extortion, and so on. The first Governor- 
General, Warren Hastings, was so accused, and 
though he was acquitted, his trial dragged on 
Disco V- for many years. Still further away the voyages of 
Australia, Captain Cook had recently revealed to Europe 
^^^^' ' the huge continent of Australia, the islands 
of New Zealand, and numerous other islands 
in the Pacific Ocean. Our first colonies began 
to be planted in Australia in 1787. 
The At home great changes were beginning which 

Industrial • , , t» • . • p 

Revoiu- were going to turn rJritam irom a corn-growing 
and wool-growing country into the workshop 
of the wo d. These changes have got the 
name of the "Industrial Revolution." They 
took more than a century to work out, and the 
result of them has been that we now buy nearly 
all our food from distant lands, and buy it 
with the goods which we make in our great 
cities, principally iron, cotton, and woollen 
goods. It is sometimes a little difficult to 
arrange for an uninterrupted supply of food 
for forty million people. Until about the middle 



tion. 



THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 247 

of the eighteenth century the south and east 

of England had been the richest counties. Now ^'"^^ ^^^ 

coal. 

the north and west. South Wales and Southern 
Scotland quickly began to supplant them 
because in these parts iron and coal are found 
close together. The invention of numerous 
machines also began to save hand-labour, 
and weaving and spinning, which were formerly 
done in country cottages, were now done in 
great factories, which could only exist in great 
towns. The most important of all discoveries 
of this period is that of the steam engine. 
For, by the force of steam, all machines could ^team 
be worked for all manufactures much more 
cheaply and powerfully than by hand-labour 
or by water-mills. England used steam in all 
her manufactures twenty years before any 
other nation, and so no other nations could at 
first compete with her. The sad result has increase 
been that the country districts have gradually 
been deserted and the towns have become more 
important than the farming land. But the 
full result was not generally realized until 
far into the nineteenth century. At first, J^^<J ^^ 
the faster population increased in the towns, 
the greater was the demand for corn to feed 
it. Very little corn could yet be brought from 
abroad, because few countries had any corn 
to spare before the vast spaces of America and 



248 GEORGE III 

Canada were cultivated. So the price of corn 
began to go up and up; and, though wages 
went up too, they never went up fast enough. 
The poor When the harvest fell short, the poor were 
often very badly off for food, and had to have 
relief given them out of the Poor Rates. Poor 
Rates had existed since the reign of Elizabeth, 
but had not increased much or been felt as a 
great burden until this period; now they began 
to increase enormously. There were also riots 
in every year of bad harvest, and many of these 
Riots, riots were directed against the new machinery, 
which foolish men said "took the bread out of 
their mouths." In that belief the rioters made 
a point of breaking the machines. So, side 
by side with the enormous increase of the 
country's wealth, there was often found increase 
of misery and discontent among the poor. 
Foolishly, but naturally, the poor used to 
blame the government and the laws for their 
misery. But the condition of the lowest class 
of the people, both in the old and the new 
towns, had long been attracting the attention 
of serious people. In the reigns of George I 
and George II, though many bishops and clergy 
did their duty earnestly, there were many 
who did not, and perhaps we may admit that 
the Church of England had, as a whole, rather 
"gone to sleep." It was this which gave such 



PITT'S WISDOM AND REFORMS 249 

effect to the preaching of the brothers John and ^«, 

tVcsIgv&h 

Charles Wesley from about 1730. They went move- 
into the poorest slums and the most deserted mo-bi. 
parishes and preached, often in the open air, 
the need of repentance and the duty of listen- 
ing to that message. The result was the 
foundation of the "Methodist" and Wesley an 
Communities, which gradually grew into dis- 
senting churches, separated, much against the 
original intentions of their founder, from the 
National Church. John Wesley lived to a 
great age and continued to preach till the day 
of his death in 1791. 

It was during the long ministry of William Pjtt's 
Pitt the younger, the son of the man who won and 
Canada for us, that these great changes began 1784^3. 
to bear their first fruit. Pitt was Prime Minis- 
ter from 1783 to 1801, and again from 1804 to 
1806. For nine years he kept the peace, and 
undertook an infinite number of valuable re- 
forms in every department of the State save 
one. He simplified taxes and the Customs' 
duties and the method of collecting them; 
he began to pay off the National Debt. He 
tried to reform the House of Commons, to 
abolish the cruel trade of carrying slaves from 
Africa to the West Indies; he tried to pacify 
Ireland and give it perfect free trade with 
Britain; and he would have liked to abolish 



250 GEORGE III 

the laws which still shut out the Catholics from 
Parliament. Every wise and moderate change 
which took place during the nineteenth century- 
had already been conceived by this great and 
wise man. But many of his proposals were 
upset or spoiled either by the opposition of the 
Whigs, the stupidity of the Tories, or the prej- 
His udices of King George. The one mistake 
the Army Pitt made was in refusing to set the Army and 
an avy. jsjg^^y ^^ ^ proper footiug to meet a future war. 
He seemed to think that Europe was going to 
be at peace forever; whereas the greatest war 
that had ever threatened Great Britain was 
just going to burst upon her and continue for 
twenty-two years. Then all Pitt's projects 
for reform had to be thrown to the winds and 
the nation had to harden itself to fight to the 
death. 
The This great war was caused by the "French 
Revoiu- Revolution." It was the old story of France 
desiring to dominate the world; and it began 
in this way : The French people had a series 
of real grievances against their clumsy, stupid, 
old-fashioned system of government by an 
"absolute" king; and they demanded a parlia- 
mentary system and a "limited" monarchy 
like our own. But at the first touch the whole 
fabric of old France fell to pieces. Kings, nobles, 
society itself were hurled down; all in the name 



ENGLAND MUST FIGHT 251 

of some imaginary "natural rights" of every- 
body to have an equal share in government. 
A Republic was set up; King Louis XVI was ^agev\oT 
put to death. A new kind of "Gospel" was ^a'"- 

1792. 

preached; "all men are equal," "all government 
is tyranny, all religion is a sham," "down 
with everything and up with ourselves" ("our- 
selves" being the bloodthirsty mobs of Paris 
and other great cities). This precious Repub- 
lic proceeded to offer its alliance to all the 
peoples of Europe who wished to abolish their 
kings, and "recover their liberty." It declared 
war on Austria and Prussia, and began by invad- 
ing Belgium and threatening Holland, which 
had been our ally since 1688. 

Then, at the opening of 1793, Pitt felt bound England 
to interfere. The nation was heartily at his fight, 
back. Scenes of the utmost horror and cruelty ^'^^^' 
had taken place in France, and the French peo- 
ple, once the most civilized in Europe, seemed to Noisy 
have gone mad. There were a few noisy poli- ^{l^f. 
ticians in Britain, both in and outside Parlia- ^^'^'^s- 
ment, who sympathized with the French, and 
cried out for "Radical Reform" and a "Nation- 
al Convention" of the whole British people; 
but they were very few. The worst of them 
was the Whig orator, Charles Fox, who had 
rejoiced over every disaster of his country 
during the war against America. A good deal 



252 GEORGE III 

of wild nonsense was also written in some of 
the Whig newspapers. Daily newspapers began 
early in the eighteenth century; but they were 
still expensive, and, as yet, few of the poorer 
classes could read, so the newspapers used to 
be passed from hand to hand, or read aloud 
in the public-house. On the whole, the voice 
of the newspapers was thoroughly patriotic. 

^^^l^lf_ But if there were few sympathizers with 
1800. France in Britain, there were many in Ireland. 
Ireland still had real grievances, though during 
the last thirty years they had steadily been 
removed. She had shown little gratitude for 
their removal, and many Irishmen had openly 
sympathized with the American rebellion. In 
1782 her Parliament had been declared to be 
absolutely free from the laws of the British 
Parliament, and there was therefore a real 
danger that Ireland might refuse to go to war 
Catholics to help Great Britain. The Catholics were 

testants stiU shut out from this Parliament; but, ex- 
in Ireland, ^epting iu Ulstcr, nearly all the poorer Irish- 
men were Catholics. Pitt, as I told you, 
wanted to admit Catholics to both Parliaments; 
but it was not the time to make such a great 
change, when Britain was in the middle of a 
dangerous war, and when the mass of the Irish 
peasants, poor, disloyal, and ignorant, were 
quite ready to welcome a French invasion of 



STATE OF IRELAND 253 

Ireland. From 1795 there was almost a state civil War 
of civil war between Irish Protestants and Rebellion 
Catholics; and, in 1798, the latter openly iandr' 
rebelled. England had very few troops to ^''^^^• 
spare, and the rebellion took nearly a year to 
put down. French invasion was hourly ex- 
pected, though only once a very few French 
troops were able to land. When the rebellion J^? , 

^ . . . Union of 

was over, Pitt rightly decided that the best t>e Par- 
thing for both countries was to abolish the isoo. 
Irish Parliament, and to make one united 
Parliament for the two islands (1800). In 
this united Parliament Pitt intended to allow 
the Catholics to sit; but King George foolishly 
and obstinately refused to agree, and so Pitt Resigna- 
had to resign the office of Prime Minister, Pitt, isoi. 
which he had held for eighteen years. 

And now for the "great war." For Britain ^t^ ^^^ 

., , abroad. 

it would necessarily be a sea war, and therefore 
a war for empire, trade, and colonies. For 
France, as far as she could make it so, it would 
be a land war, since it was Europe that France 
wanted to conquer, not sea or colonies. At Prance 

n Til 1 Pit intends to 

first, as I told you, she professed to be con- conquer 
quering other states for their own good, "to "^°^^' 
liberate them from their tyrants," and all 
that sort of nonsense. But most nations, 
even those that really were badly governed, 
soon found out that French invasion was much 



254 GEORGE III 

worse than any amount of bad government 
by their own "tyrants." So nation after 
nation rose and fought against France, either 
one by one or in great alhances of nations. 
All were beaten; France was the greatest land 
power in the world, and her soldiers the bravest, 
cleverest, and fiercest fighters. All the nations 
in the world appealed to England to help them 
with the one thing which all knew she had got 
in heaps, money. We actually paid Dutch- 
men, Prussians, Austrians, Spaniards, Russians 
and even Turks to fight for their own interests 
against France. 
English How could wc afford to do this? Simply 

com- , . 

merce, bccausc of the powcr of our Navy, which in a 

1815 few years became so great, that it was able to 

crush the commerce and to take the colonies 

of any nation that would not fight against 

France. Soon it was only in Britain that 

people could buy the goods of the far East and 

the far West, silk, coffee, tobacco, sugar, tea, 

spice. And at last only in Britain could they 

buy manufactured articles at all. Even the 

very Frenchmen who fought us had to buy the 

clothes and shoes they wore from English 

merchants ! 

The This control of the world's trade did not 

War, come to us at once, and not without hard 

1793-7. ggjj^ijjg^ Pitt, as I told you, had neglected 



THE NAVAL WAR 255 

the Army and Navy. Our admirals were old, 
our generals were at first very stupid. We 
sent some troops to help the Dutch, and they 
were very badly beaten. Holland became a 
daughter-republic of France, and Belgium be- 
came a French province. The poor Dutch 
did not gain much by the exchange, for the 
British navy simply took away all their colonies 
notably Ceylon and the Cape of Good Hope, 
just as it was taking the French West Indian 
Islands. Nearer home our fleet did not do so 
well. The French Republic did not have so 
good a navy as the old French Monarchy had 
had; but its sailors made up in gallantry what 
they lacked in skill and efficiency, and it was 
not until 1797 that we won a great naval battle 
in European waters. The Spaniards had been Battle of 
forced into the French alliance, and in that Vmcent, 
year Sir John Jervis and Captain Nelson ^'^^^^ 
(soon to be Lord Nelson) utterly defeated a 
big French and Spanish fleet at Cape St. 
Vincent on the Spanish coast. 

It was lust at this time that the greatest Napoleon 
soldier that ever lived came to lead the French parte 
— Napoleon Bonaparte. He appeared first 
as a victorious general in 1796, then as *' First 
Consul" (that is, President) of the French becomes 

-r» 1 T 1 . Emperor 

Republic, 1799; then m 1804 as Emperor of the 
of the French." By this time France had isSI^ ' 



He means 
to 



256 GEORGE III 

given up all idea of delivering peoples from 
"tyrants," and simply meant to conquer all 
the world for her own benefit. Napoleon at 
once saw that this was impossible as long 
as Britain remained free and victorious at sea. 
i™^de To invade Britain, or to destroy in some other 
England, ^^y the Wealth and commerce of Britain, be- 
came his one desire. But to invade Britain 
while our fleet watched outside all French 
harbours, while it prevented French ships from 
sailing out, and smashed them if they did, was 
not so easy. The mere fear of invasion was 
enough to set the hearts of all Britons beating. 
The Volunteers flocked to arms from every parish 
tcCTs^ in our island; and by 1804 we had nearly half a 
1803-5. million men in fighting trim in a population of 
little over eleven millions. If we were to keep 
the same proportion to-day, we ought to have 
nearly three millions of men under arms. How 
many have we got? 
Battles of But in truth Napoleon's chances of invading 
1798, and US wcrc uot great. Nelson had broken his 
Sen Mediterranean fleet to splinters at the Battle 
i80o'. of the Nile, 1798, and had also finished a Danish 
fleet (which had been got ready to help France) 
at the Battle of Copenhagen in 1800. A few 
Peace of mouths of pcacc, 1802-3, followed the retire- 
isS'. nient of Pitt from the Government. But the 
war began again in 1803; Pitt came back in 



BATTLE OF TRAFALGAR 257 

the next year, and governed Britain until his War 
death at the beginning of 1806. The years isos-is. 
1803-4-5 were the most dangerous. Napoleon 
had got a great army at Boulogne (which is 
almost within sight of the shore of Kent, not 
three hours' sail, with a fair wind, from Folke- 
stone), ready to be rowed across the Channel 
in large, flat-bottomed boats. 

But what was the use of that without a French The 
fleet to protect the flat-bottoms.'^ If they had year.isos. 
tried to get across unprotected, a single British 
warship could have pounded them into a red 
rice-pudding in a few minutes; and so our real 
task was to watch the French harbours and 
prevent their ships of war getting out. The 
final struggle came in 1805. The French 
Admiral Villeneuve managed to get out from 
Toulon; drove off the British force which was 
watching the Spanish ports, and so freed the 
Spanish fleet. He then sailed across the Atlan- Battle of 

. . . Trafal- 

tic and back again, in the hope of drawing all gar, Oct. 
British ships away from the Channel. After ^^' ^^^^' 
a long chase Lord Nelson met him off the 
Spanish coast, and won the Battle of Trafalgar 
in October, 1805. It was almost a dead calm 
all the morning as the great fleets crept slowly 
toward each other — they must have looked 
like moving thunder-clouds. Lord Nelson's 
famous signal *' England expects that every 



258 GEORGE III 

man will do his duty" was spelled out in little 
flags from the mast of his great ship the Victory. 
And every man did. Almost the whole French 
and Spanish fleets were there sunk or taken pris- 
oners. No such victory had been won at sea 
since the Greeks beat the Persians at Salamis 
nearly five hundred years before Christ. Nelson 
was killed in the battle; but the plan of invasion 
was over and Napoleon never resumed it. The 
French navy hardly recovered from this defeat 
before our own days. You can see the Victory 
still moored in Portsmouth harbour, and can 
go into the little dark cabin in which Nelson 
died, happy in spite of mortal pain, because 
he just lived long enough to hear of England's 
triumph. 
vSorSs The remaining colonies of France and her 
^'con^ allies were gradually conquered during the 
tinent, ncxt tcu ycars. But at first this seemed to 
help little toward freeing the continent of Europe 
which, by 1807, France had subdued right up 
to the Russian frontier. Prussia had been 
beaten to pieces in 1806; Austria which, on the 
whole, had been the most steady of Napo- 
leon's enemies, was beaten for the third time 
in 1809, and was half inclined to make an 
alliance with him; but by that time Napoleon 
had run his head against something which was 
going to destroy him. 



i WBytjMMaHMMMuaiui g w i Bama^^ 




llhoCTOBER. 2.1. TSOij HI 



NAPOLEON ATTACKS SPAIN 259 

Much the worst governed, most ignorant, ^^p°JJ*° 
most backward nation in Europe, was Spain. Spain, 
Napoleon thought it would be easy to put one 
of his brothers on the throne of Spain, and one 
of his generals on the throne, of Portugal. 
Spain was, besides, the oldest ally of France; 
but when Napoleon tried this plan in 1808, 
she became at once his fiercest enemy. She did 
not want to be "reformed" or better governed; 
she wanted to keep her stupid, cruel Catholic 
kings and priests. Both Spain and Portugal f^^^f^^ 
at once cried out for British help; and, as the sent to 
road by sea was in our hands, we began at once isos. 
to send help in money, and very soon in 
men. With the men we sent a ma?z. "In war," 
said Napoleon himself, "it is not so much men 
as a man that counts." Sir Arthur Wellesley, f^^;^^^^. 
one day to be known as the Duke of Welling- Weiies- 
ton, was perhaps not so great a soldier as 
Marlborough or as Napoleon. His previous ex- 
perience of war had been mostly in India, where, 
under his brother, the Marquis Wellesley, who 
was Governor-General of India, he had won, 
in 1803 and 1804, great victories over enor- 
mous swarms of native cavalry called Mahrat- 
tas. But he was the most patient and skilful 
leader we had had since Marlborough, and he 
had complete confidence in himself and in his 
power to beat the French. 



260 GEORGE HI 

The jje landed in Portugal in 1808, won a great 

suiarWar; battle at Vimeiro, and early in the next year 

vimeiro, had driven the French back into Spain. He 

1808. |-jjgjj ]]2a(Je Lisbon (the capital city of Portugal) 

his "base of operations." The British fleet 

was able continually to bring supplies, money, 

Welling- fQQ^ and men to Lisbon. Wellington fortified 

ton S\ ^ '^ 

advance, the approach to the city very strongly, and 
12. was able to repel an enormous French army 
which came to attack him there in 1810. He 
followed it up into Spain as it retreated; and 
year by year advanced further into Spain, 
winning battle after battle. But each winter 
he fell back upon his base. The fierce patriot- 
ism of the Spanish peasants, who killed every 
Frenchman they met, helped us enormously, 
though in the battles their armies were of little 
use to us, and their generals worse than useless. 

Battle of At last in 1813 came a year in which Welling- 

Vittoria, ^ • T» 1 TT 

1813. ton did not need to retreat into Portugal. He 
won the great Battle of Vittoria in June, and 
then drove the French back in headlong flight 
over the Pyrenees. Early in 1814 our men 
were fighting their way into that French prov- 
ince, which, five hundred years before, we 
used to call "English Aquitaine." 
Napoleon And meanwhile in 1812, at the other end of 
Russia, Europe, Napoleon himself had suffered an even 
defeat! worsc disastcr. He had invaded Russia, a 



NAPOLEON ABDICATES 261 

country whose people were as ignorant, as back- 
ward and as patriotic as the Spaniards. The 
greatest French army that was ever put on 
foot had starved and been frozen among the Europe 
snows of Russia. As its broken remnants ^Ztst 
retreated through Germany, the Prussians, ^i3.'f4, 
whom the French had cruelly ill-treated since 
1806, jumped upon them, and called on all 
other Germans to do the same. The Austrians 
joined in. England poured money into the 
hands of all who would fight the French. Since 
Pitt's death, until 1812 there had only been 
one great British Minister, George Canning; 
but he had resigned his office in 1809. Now in Lord 
1812 Lord Castelreagh, a minister almost as reagh! 
great as Pitt, came to the front, and it was his i^^^'^^- 
government that really finished the war. Na- 
poleon could, indeed, collect a new army in 
1813, but it was never so good as the one 
he had lost in Russia; and it suffered a fearful 
defeat at Leipzig. After a most gallant defence 
of the French roads which lead to Paris, Na- Napoleon 

, niii* 1. abdicates, 

poleon was compelled by nis own generals to i8i4. 
resign the throne, and Louis XVIII, the heir 
of the old French monarchy, was recalled to 
France as king in 1814. Napoleon was al- 
lowed to retire to the little Italian island of 
Elba, but he did not stay there long. 

In order to arrange a general peace, the 



262 GEORGE III 

great powers of Europe sent ambassadors to 
Congress Vienna. But while they were doing this, in 
^1815,' March, 1815, Napoleon escaped from Elba, 
Napoleon! landed in France, and called on the French 
^1815' P^^pl^ t^ follow him once more. Nearly all 
Frenchmen were tired of war; but, like other 
^1815* brave fellows, they loved glory, and Napo- 
leon's name spelt glory for them. They forgot 
his tyranny and his folly, and they pro- 
claimed him Emperor yet again. Europe was 
utterly taken by surprise, and nearly all its 
armies had been dismissed. But the Prussians 
and English were more ready for fighting than 
the Russians and Austrians, and so within 
three months they were able to collect over 
two hundred thousand men for the defence of 
Belgium. Napoleon's new army was nearly 
three hundred thousand strong; but he only 
took about half of it to attack Belgium early 
in the summer of 1815. 

The Duke of Wellington and the Prussian 

Battles of general. Marshal Blucher, were waiting for 

Bras and him in a long line to the south of Brussels. 

June^e! On June 16th, Napoleon's left wing fought a 

^^^^- fearful drawn battle with Wellington at Quatre 

Bras, and his right wing just managed to beat 

Blucher at Ligny. On the 17th there was no 

fighting; but the Prussians had fallen back 

eastward, and had lost touch with the English. 



BATTLE OF WATERLOO 263 

So, on the 18th, Wellington and the English Battle of 
army, ninety thousand strong, had to bear, June is,' 
for seven hours, the attacks of a hundred and 
twenty thousand Frenchmen at Waterloo. 
Wellington knew that Blucher would come and 
help him as fast as he could; but the roads were 
heavy from rain, and Blucher had been fearfully 
hard-hit two days before. But at last he 
came, though his men did not get into action 
till about 4.30 p. m., and did not produce much 
effect on the French for two hours more. We 
had then been defending our position since 11 
A. M. But soon after seven we began to ad- 
vance, and the night closed with a headlong flight 
of the French Emperor and his army on the 
road to Paris. 

This battle of Waterloo ended the Great War; Reace at 
the last war, let us hope, that we shall ever ^^ ' 
have to fight against the French, who are now 
our best friends. Long ago Pitt had said 
"England has saved herself by her exertions, 
she will save Europe by her example." In 
1815 she had indeed done both. 

When the final treaty was made in that The gains 

• . I 1 I • I n of Great 

year, our gams m actual territory were small. Britain at 
We gave back the greater part of the colonies ^^^ ^^^^^' 
we had taken from France and her allies, 
keeping only the West Indian island of Toba- 
go, the Island of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean, 



264 GEORGE III 

the Dutch colonies of Ceylon and the Cape of 
Good Hope, and the little Dutch province 
of Guiana in South America. In the Medi- 
terranean, we kept the island of Malta, but gave 
back Minorca to Spain. Our real reward, 
then, came in the commerce of the world, 
which during the war had passed wholly into 
our hands. 

The French Wars. 

The boats of Newhaven and Folkestone and 

Dover, 
To Dieppe and Boulogne and to Calais cross 

over; 
And in each of those runs there is not a square 

yard 
Where the English and French haven't fought 

and fought hard! 

If the ships that were sunk could be floated 

once more. 
They'd stretch like a raft from the shore to 

the shore. 
And we'd see, as we crossed, every pattern and 

plan 
Of ship that was built since sea-fighting began. 

There'd be biremes and brigantines, cutters 

and sloops. 
Cogs, carracks and galleons with gay gilded 

poops — 
Hoys, caravels, ketches, corvettes and the rest. 
As thick as regattas, from Ramsgate to Brest. 




WATERLOO, 7 P.M., JUNE 18, 1815 



THE FRENCH WARS 265 

But the galleys of Csesar, the squadrons of 

Sluys, 
And Nelson's crack frigates are hid froni'our eyes. 
Where the high Seventy-fours of Napoleon's 

days, 
Lie down with Deal luggers and French chasse- 

marees. 

They'll answer no signal — they rest on the 
ooze 

With their honey-combed guns and their skele- 
ton crews — 

And racing above them, through sunshine or 
gale. 

The Cross-Channel packets come in with the 
Mail. 

Then the poor sea-sick passengers, English and 

French, 
Must open their trunks on the Custom-house 

bench, 
While the officers rummage for smuggled cigars 
And nobody thinks of our blood-thirsty wars! 



CHAPTER XII 

GEORGE III TO GEORGE V, 1815-1911 

^niner* ^^^ pcriod of English History which remains 
five years, for me to tell you about will bring us down to 
our own days. It is a much more difficult story 
to understand than any that I have already told 
you. It is also much more difficult to write 
about. 

For people hold such diverse opinons about 
the events of the present day and of the last 
hundred years. These opinions are very often 
the result of their upbringing; "we have heard 
with our ears and our fathers have told us." 
Men are still alive who were born before Water- 
loo was fought. As you get older you will 
form opinions about these events for your- 
selves; and so it is desirable for me, in this last 
chapter, rather to state what did take place 
than to try to guide your opinions. And it 
will be easier to do this if you, my readers, will 
allow me to treat the period as all one, rather 
than narrate the events year by year. 

On the whole, the progress of Great Britain 

266 



PROGRESS TOWARD DEMOCRACY 267 

during the past ninety-five years has been Progress 
toward what is called "Democracy," a long Democ- 
word meaning "Government by the people." ^^^^' 
This form of government may be said to be 
still "on its trial." Let us hope that it will 
prove a great success. It will only do so if 
all classes of the people realize that they have 
duties as well as rights, and if each class realizes 
that every other class has rights as well as itself. 

Five sovereigns have reigned and died during Five 
these ninety-five years, and the sixth is now eigns'in 
upon the throne. George III had long been ninety- 
blind and insane when he died in 1820, and it five years 
was the eldest of his seven sons who became iv, 1820- 
King in that year as George IV. This man 
had been acting as Prince Regent for his 
insane father since 1810. He was naturally 
clever and had some kind of selfish good nature, 
but he was mean, cowardly, and an incredible 
liar. Some famous lies he told so often that at 
last he got to believe them himself; for instance, 
he was fond of saying that he had been present 
at the Battle of Waterloo, whereas he had 
never seen a shot fired in his life. 

He was succeeded in 1830 by a stupid honest wmiam 
old gentleman, his brother, William IV, who, ^' ^^^^' 
as a young man, had been nicknamed "Silly 
Billy." There was no harm in King William, 
but there was little active good, and so the 



268 GEORGE III TO GEORGE V 

influence of the Crown, both upon private and 
pubHc hfe, was very slight when he died in 
1837. His heir was his niece Victoria, a girl 
of eighteen of whom little was then known, but 
of whose goodness and high spirit, stories were 
already being told. 
thJorelt* "Who will be King, Mamma," she said, when 
i837-i90i', she was twelve years old, "when Uncle William 
dies.f^" "You will be Queen, my dear.'* 
"Then I must be a very good little girl now," 
her char- shc replied. In this wonderful lady the spirit 
acter. ^£ ^^jj j^^^. gj-g^tcst auccstors sccmcd to have 
revived, the burning English patriotism of 
the Tudors, the Scottish heart of the Stuarts, 
the courage of Edward III, the wisdom of 
Edward I, Henry II and Alfred. And all were 
softened and beautified by womanly love and 
tenderness. No sovereign ever so unweariedly 
set herself to win the love of her people, to be 
the servant of her people. And her people 
rewarded her with a love that she had more 
than deserved. Her reign of sixty-three years 
will always be remembered in history by her 
name; it was the "Victorian Age." Her hus- 
band was her own cousin, the wise and good 
Edward Princc Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, a small 

VII 1901- 

' 1910. State in central Germany. She was succeeded 
by her eldest son, Edward VII, whose too 
short reign closed only after this book was 



THE BELLS AND THE QUEEN 269 

begun. All the Empire is still in mourning 
for him, the wise and prudent statesman, the 
peace-lover, the peacemaker of Europe, the 
noble English gentleman. 

The result of the reigns of Victoria and George v, 

1910 

Edward VII has been to lift the Crown again 
to a position which it had not occupied in 
men's minds since the death of Elizabeth. 
It is not with our lips only that we are loyal 
to King George V, it is with our hearts also. 
The crown is not only the "golden circle" that 
binds the Empire together; it is the greatest 
thing in that Empire. 

The Bells and the Queen, 1911. 

"Gay go up and gay go down 
To ring the Bells of London Town." 
When London Town's asleep in bed 
You'll hear the Bells ring overhead. 

In excelsis gloria! 

Ringing for Victoria, 
Ringing for their mighty mistress — ten years 

dead ! 

Here's more gain than Gloriana guessed, 
Than Gloriana guessed or Indies bring — 

Than golden Indies bring. A Queen confessed, 
A Queen confessed that crowned her people 
King. 



270 GEORGE III TO GEORGE V 

Her people King, and crowned all Kings above, 
Above all Kings have crowned their Queen 
their love — 
Have crowned their love their Queen, their 
Queen their love! 

Denying her, we do ourselves deny. 

Disowning her are we ourselves disowned. 

Mirror was she of our fidelity. 

And handmaid of our destiny enthroned; 

The very marrow of Youth's dream, and still 

Yoke-mate of wisest Age that worked her will! 

Our fathers had declared to us her praise. 

Her praise the years had proven past all 

speech. 

And past all speech our loyal hearts always. 

Always our hearts lay open, each to each; 

Therefore men gave their treasure and their 

blood 
To this one woman — for she understood ! 

Four o' the clock! Now all the world is still. 
London Bells to all the world declare 
The Secret of the Empire — read who will! 
The Glory of the People — touch who dare! 

The Bells: 

Power that has reached itself all kingly 

powers, 

St. Margarefs: By love o'erpowered — 

St. Martin's: By love o'erpowered — 

St. Clement Danes': By love o'erpowered. 

The greater power confers! 



THE BRITISH PARLIAMENT 271 

The Bells: 

For we were hers, as she as she was ours. 
Bow Bells: And she was ours — 
St. PauVs: And she was ours — 
Westminster: And she was ours. 
As we, even we, were hers! 

The Bells: 

As we were hers! 

The next greatest thing, probably every one The 
will admit, is the Parliament of the United ParViL 
Kingdom. During these ninety-five years "^^^^i 
that Parliament has undergone considerable i9io 
changes. The House of Lords has been very 
much increased in numbers, but has not been 
altogether strengthened by this increase. It ^^^^^ ^^ 
still represents, as it has always represented. Lords. 
the wealthy people of the kingdom. When 
the only wealth was in land, the House of Lords 
consisted almost wholly of great landowners. 
Now that the traders have more wealth than 
the landowners, rich manufacturers and other 
great employers of labour have been made 
peers, though they also have nearly always 
bought land to support their dignity. 

The House of Commons has undergone a The 
still greater change. I told you in the last c^^^^ ° 
chapter what serious need there was in the 
eighteenth century for a "Reform" of that 



com- 
mons. 



272 GEORGE III TO GEORGE V 

house, and how, during the twenty -two years of 
the Great War, that and all other reforms had 
to be put off. A very small knot of Whigs 
had never ceased to urge that reform even 
during the war. The foremost of these was 
Charles, Earl Grey. 
^^;*fthe I liave had to scold the Whigs a good deal 
iIis^S ^^™S the reign of George III, and I am afraid 
I shall now have to scold the Tories for their 
attitude during the first fifteen of these ninety- 
five years. They held power right up to 1830, 
and it was obviously their duty to take up this 
and many other questions in a serious and 
''modern" spirit. They consisted of two sec- 
tions, the enlightened Tories, like Mr. Canning 
and Sir Robert Peel, who had sat at the feet 
of William Pitt; and the stick-in-the-mud 
Tories, like Lord Sidmouth and Lord Eldon, 
who were opposed to any change in any depart- 
ment of life. I think it was strange that the 
former as well as the latter section of Tories 
The were opposed to reform of the House of Com- 

^' iiiffs for 

Reform of mous. The rcsult was that it fell wholly to 
*(J Com- ^^^ Whigs to force it on; and the Whigs, being 
isuSi ^^^k i^ Parliament did not scruple to appeal 
to the passions of uneducated people outside 
Parliament. They encouraged "monster meet- 
ings," "monster petitions" and such like. 
There were riots in favour of Reform. At 



THE BRITISH PARLIAMENT 273 

one riot at Manchester in 1819 the soldiers had 
to be called in, and several people were shot. 
Very likely these were only innocent specta- 
tors and not rioters at all; those who get up 
riots are usually careful to keep out of the way 
when their suppression begins. Stiff laws 
were passed in Parliament to prevent such 
riotous meetings for the future. 

From 1820-30 the question of Reform was '^^f 

111111 Jttsiorm 

never for a moment allowed to slumber, and bui, 

1832 

at last in 1832 the Duke of Wellington, who, 
though opposed to Reform himself, was al- 
ways moderate and sensible, advised the 
Tories to give way, and a "Reform Bill" was 
at last got through both Houses, an eminently 
sensible and moderate Bill. The number of 
members in the House was not increased, but 
the absurd old boroughs with few or no in- 
habitants lost their right of sending members, 
and the great growing towns got that right. 
All persons in the counties with a moderate 
amount of property got votes for election of 
members, and all persons in the towns who had 
a house worth £10 a year. The educated 
people of Great Britain and Ireland were 
very fairly represented in the House of Com- 
mons between 1832 and 1867. 

But this did not stop agitation outside. A Fresh 
group of men called "Chartists" began to cry ^^' ^ *°°' 



1867-85. 



274 GEORGE III TO GEORGE V 

Charti^ts^ out foF Something more, for the representation 
1832-48! of the uneducated as well. They demanded 
that every grown-up man should have a vote, 
that members of Parliament should be paid, 
that a new Parliament should be elected every 
year, and so on. These men tried to get up 
riots in favour of their demands; in 184 8 it looked 
as if these riots were going to be serious. 
Reform ^^^ ^^^ thing fizzlcd out somchow. Twice 
Bills, since that time new Reform Bills have been 
passed, one by each party in the State, by the 
Tories in 1867 (now called "Conservatives"), 
and by the Whigs in 1885 (now called "Lib- 
erals" or "Radicals"). On each occasion the 
vote was given to poorer and less educated 
classes of the people, and on the latter occasion 
the distinction between counties and boroughs 
was practically abolished; every district in 
Britain, whether of town or country, is now 
represented in the House of Commons pretty 
nearly according to the number of people 
living in it. 

The Irish Unfortunately one exception to this prin- 
ciple has been allowed. With the exception 
of those from Ulster, the Irish members of 
the House of Commons since the Union of 1800 
have never been loyal to our system of govern- 
ment, but have continually cried out for a 
separate Parliament in Dublin. The first 



THE BRITISH PARLIAMENT 275 

great agitator for this purpose was the orator 
Daniel O'Connell, in the reigns of George IV 
and WilHam IV and at the beginning of Vic- 
toria's reign. He has been followed by many 
others, notably by Mr. Parnell, and the 
agitation is still continuing. In order to hush 
this cry, British statesmen have allowed Ireland 
to have many more members of the House 
of Commons than the population of that 
island warrants. More than one statesman, 
especially the famous Mr. Gladstone in 1885 
and 1892, has thought of conciliating the Irish, 
by granting them, under the name of "Home 
Rule," the separate Parliament which they 
demand. But most people fear that a separate 
Irish Parliament would be followed by a com- 
plete separation between Ireland and Great 
Britain, by the establishment of an Irish 
Republic, and by the oppression of the well-to- 
do and intelligent classes of Irishmen, who are 
certainly loyal to the British Crown. All 
British politicians, on both sides, have, during 
the last seventy years, made haste to remove 
every real, and, indeed, every imaginary 
grievance of the Irish people, though they have 
earned no gratitude by doing so. 

As regards the Ministers of the Crown, The 

1 • T (• -r» T Ministers 

whom we may consider next after Parliament of the 
as an "institution" of the country, it has been 



2--^ GEORGE III TO GEORGE V 

well understood, ever since George Ill's death, 
that the King "reigns but does not govern." 
He takes as his ministers men who are agreeable 
to the majority in the existing House of Com- 
mons. In quiet times there is a new House 
of Commons about every five or six years and 
there must be one every seven years. There 
is, therefore, very likely to be a change of ministry 
every time there is a new House. Before the 
first Reform Bill there were only about 300,000 
electors; there are now over 7,000,000. But, 
oddly enough, the larger the number of electors, 
the more frequent are the changes of public 
opinion. In former days Whigs or Tories 
might well hold office through three or four 
successive parliaments; now it is very rare that 
either party holds it through two. The opinion 
of the electors has a curious habit of swinging 
right round in a very short space of time; and, 
so, great changes in our rulers are of frequent 
occurrence. 
The These rulers or ministers we call the "Cab- 
inet"; and in the Cabinet you will always 
find a "Prime Minister," generally called the 
"First Lord of the Treasury," at the head of 
the whole thing; it is with him that the real 
responsibility lies. He explains to the King 
what he and his friends think ought to be done; 
and, when he is a wise man, he generally finds 



THE BRITISH PARLIAMENT 277 

that the King's advice on the matter is very well X^« , 
worth listening to. If the King does not ap- advice. 
prove of what his Prime Minister suggests he 
can always dismiss him; but it is of no use his 
doing this unless he can appoint some one else 
whom the existing House of Commons will 
follow; or unless he is prepared to dismiss the 
existing House of Commons and call a new Par- 
liament. The King will do this last if he feels 
sure that the Minister and the existing House 
are leading the nation astray or are leading it 
where it doesn't want to go. Any very 
"revolutionary" proposal, such as the abolition 
of either House of Parliament, the surrender 
of India or the Colonies, the reduction of the 
Navy very far below the strength necessary 
to defend the Empire, might quite conceiv- 
ably obtain for a moment a majority in the 
House of Commons, and, though it is unlikely, 
it is just possible that the House of Lords 
might be terrified into accepting it. But 
then it would be the duty of the King to in- 
terfere, and to dismiss, at all costs, the Min- 
istry which was rash enough to make such a 
proposal. 

Besides the Prime Minister, the most im- Depart- 
portant members of the Cabinet are the Chan- of the 
cellor of the Exchequer, who manages money Sent™ 
matters, the Secretaries of State for War, for 



278 GEORGE III TO GEORGE V 

Foreign Affairs, for the Colonies, for Home 
Affairs, and the First Lord of the Admiralty, 
who manages the Navy. Each is responsible 
for some particular part of the task of govern- 
ment; but all must agree upon all important 
questions, and the minister who doesn't agree 
with the rest of the Cabinet must resign. 
The most J gjjaii ^q^ troublc you with a list of the 

distm- ... 1 1 1 m 

guished ministries that have held office smce 1815; 
Ministers two things ouly you should remember: first, 
1815. that ministries are more short-lived now than 
they used to be; and secondly, that they are 
more dominated by the Prime Minister for 
the time being than they used to be. The most 
distinguished Prime Ministers have been Mr. 
Canning (died 1827), Lord Grey (died 1845), 
Sir Robert Peel (died 1850), Lord Palmerston 
(died 1865), Lord Beaconsfield, better known 
as Mr. Disraeli (died 1881), Mr. Gladstone 
(died 1898), and Lord Salisbury (died 1903). 
Each in his own way has contributed some- 
thing to the greatness of England; but each, 
with the exception of Sir Robert Peel, has had 
a weak side. Speaking generally, those min- 
isters who have paid most attention to finances 
and to internal reform have been less suc- 
cessful in upholding the honour of England 
abroad and in strengthening the Army and 
Navy. 



REFORM OF THE CRIMINAL LAW 9.79 

With regard to the law and the law courts, The Law 
it is not such a very different England in which 
we live from what it was in the days of our great- 
grandfathers. The House of Lords is still 
the highest "Court of Appeal" in Great Britain 
and Ireland; but to hear appeals, only those 
peers sit who are specially appointed to be 
judges for that purpose. There is a Court 
of Appeal below it and a High Court of Justice 
below that. The judges are still appointed by 
the King, and still "go on circuit" four times 
a year to the several districts of England to 
try criminal cases, as they have done since 
the fourteenth century. There are also small 
courts called "county courts," for small law- 
suits, in some sixty different districts in Eng- 
land. Scotland has kept, since the Union of 
1708, her own system of law and law courts ^^w^^**' 
entirely different from ours, but from them Courts, 
also you can appeal to the House of Lords. 
Ireland has the same system of law as ours, 
but has her own law courts with appeal to the 
House of Lords. Each colony in the Empire 
has its own law courts and judges, and appeals 
from them and from the Indian law courts 
come not to the House of Lords, but to a few 
great judges in the Privy Council. ^^^th™ 

The one really great law reform has been Criminal 
that of the criminal law. In 1815 over one isis'-so. 



280 GEORGE III TO GEORGE V 

hundred and sixty crimes were still supposed 
to be punished with death. There are now only 
two, high treason and wilful murder, and, un- 
fortunately, people who commit high treason 
are now too often let off. In 1815 a thief 
might be hanged if he stole five shillings' 
worth of goods from a shop! He hardly ever 
was hanged, because he was tried by a jury and 
a judge, and juries preferred to declare him 
"not guilty" rather than allow him to be 
hanged; so, as a rule, he got off altogether. 
Even of those who were convicted and con- 
demned to be hanged not one tenth were 
hanged. And this was because public opinion 
was more merciful than the law. From 1788 
onward criminals who had just escaped hang- 
ing used to be "transported" to Australia, 
and this went on till 1840. The other settlers 
in that continent naturally objected very much 
to this; and we now send our criminals to 
"penal servitude" in large prisons at Dart- 
moor and Portland instead. No words can 
be too hard to use against the Tory ministers 
like Lord Eldon, who, year after year, from 
1815 to 1830, obstructed the reform of the 
criminal laws as much as they could; most 
of the reforms in them were due to the 
Whigs or to the more enlightened Tory, Sir 
Robert Peel. 



REMOVAL OF DISABILITIES 281 

To Tory Governments belonsjs the credit Admis- 

p 1 • ' 11 1-1 1 sio^ of 

oi beginning to remove the laws which made a Dissen- 

man's admission to Parliament depend upon catholics, 

his rehgious opinions. Both Lord Castlereagh, to^pa^tk- 

who died in 1822, and Mr. Canning, who ^^^^' 

1' 1 • 111 1 . 1828-53. 

died in 1827, had always been anxious to 
admit Catholics to Parliament; but it was 
just after Canning's death that, first the Prot- 
estant Dissenters in 1828, and then the 
Catholics in 1829, were admitted. Jews had 
to wait till 1853, and those who openly declared 
their disbelief in any religion at all till 1884. 
The support of the State to the Protestant 
Church in Ireland, which dated from the time 
of Elizabeth, was taken away in 1868. The zeal Church 

revival 

of the Church of England was, from 1829 on- 1829. 
ward, quickened by men like Newman and Dr. 
Pusey, and religion is now a far more vital force 
in our daily lives than it was at the end of 
George Ill's reign. Differences of opinion upon 
religion still exist, and still occasionally lead to 
squabbles between Churchmen and Dissenters, 
but they are being smoothed away; of all pas- 
sions, religious hatred is now seen to be the 
most odious, and all reasonable men acknowl- 
edge that the teaching of sound morality is the 
main duty of all religious bodies. Without 
religion there can be no good morals, and with- 
out good morals the wisest laws are futile. 



282 GEORGE III TO GEORGE V 

Other The Whiffs are responsible for the abolition 

reforms. . -^ . 

of slavery in our West Indian Islands (1833); 

the importation of slaves from Africa thither 

had been prohibited as far back as 1807. They 

The New can also claim the credit of the "New Poor 

Poor Law, t»»/ \ i«i 

1834. Law (1834), which refused to give food or 
money to the idle and improvident unless they 
would come into the "workhouse"; and this 
law made workhouse life sufficiently unpleasant, 
so that lots of idle loafers, who had hitherto 
"lived on the rates," preferred to earn their 
Munici- own living. The same Whig Government in 

form, 1835 reformed the town councils of our cities 
and boroughs in such a way that every house- 
holder now gets a vote for the election of his 
town council. In 1889 a Conservative govern- 
ment extended this plan to the country dis- 
County tricts also, and in each shire a "county council" 

1889! is now elected, which manages all local busir- 
ness such as the keeping up of roads, bridges, 
lunatic asylums, and the police. It was Sir 
Robert Peel who created the present magnifi- 
cent force of policemen, and its members are 
still sometimes, in sport, called after him 
"bobbies" and "peelers." 
National Perhaps the most important of all reforms 
tion, i87o' of the nineteenth century was the introduction 
in 1870 for all classes of the people of a system 
of schools, supported by the State and paid 



THE FOOD QUESTION 283 

for by a rate on each district. Every one is 
now compelled to attend some kind of school, 
and a man may be sent to prison if he refuses 
to send his children to school. When I was 
a boy it was quite common to meet people 
who could neither read nor write; now it is 
the rarest thing in the world. 

There was one burning question all through The food 
the first thirty years of this period, of which ^"^^ ^°'^' 
I have yet told you nothing; and it was the 
most serious of all — the question of food. 
Great Britain and Ireland could no longer 
grow enough corn to feed their great and rapidly 
increasing populations. For the two and 
twenty years which ended in 1815, govern- 
ments had been too busy saving the very 
existence of Britain and of Europe to pay 
attention to this question. But now followed 
a period of peace, in which both the bill for 
the war had to be paid, and this terrible food 
question faced in earnest. 

The bill for the war was an enormous one; The 

1 XT • -I Tx 1 1 National 

m 1793 the National Debt was not much over Debt, 
200 millions; in 1815 it was over 900 millions; isu. 
the interest to be paid on it annually had gone 
up from 8 to 33 millions. Taxation had been 
enormously heavy, and every one cried out 
for its reduction. To this cry for a reduction 
of taxes the government was perhaps right 



284 GEORGE III TO GEORGE V 

to turn a deaf ear as long as that frightful bill 
remained unpaid; and, also, during these 
ninety-five years, very little of that bill has 
really been paid ojff; the debt is still over 700 
millions, though the interest annually paid on 
each £100 of it has been reduced to £2 10s. Od. 
The Corn g^^ there can be no excuse for the deaf ear 

-Laws, 

1815-46. which the government turned to the question 
of food. The price of corn still varied with 
each harvest, and varied enormously. But 
now it was beginning to be possible to import 
corn from America, from Russia, and from 
several other places. And the proper thing to 
do would have been to put a moderate customs 
duty on the importation of corn, a duty 
which should vary with the price of corn in 
the London market. Instead of doing this. 
Parliament in 1815 passed a law saying that no 
corn should be imported at all until the price 
in London was 80^. a quarter, which meant 
that a loaf of bread would cost about 9d. 
This was called "protecting" the British 
farmers and the British landowners, who of 
course could get high prices and high rents 
when the price of corn was high; but it came 
very near to mean starving the British labourer. 
Those who upheld this plan were called "Pro- 
tectionists" ; those who wished to admit cheap 
foreign corn were called "Free Traders." 



THE CORN LAWS 285 

The "Corn Laws" became the subject of Agitation 

against 

an agitation far fiercer than that for Reform them. 
of Parhament, and with much more reason. 
Over and over again there was danger of a 
rising of the poor labourers against all who 
owned or farmed land. Even when there 
was not a bad harvest, and when the price of 
corn was far below the 80*. a quarter, it was 
easy for agitators to persuade the poor that 
they must be very badly off; and, especially 
in the days before the Reform Bill, the outcry 
of the poor against the rich was a most dis- 
tressing feature of the age. You cannot 
expect much reason from people who are really 
hard up for food, or who expect to be hard up 
for food in a few months. At last, in 1845, 
there appeared the most manifest symptoms 
of a coming famine in Ireland, owing to the 
failure of the potato crop. Sir Robert Peel, Their 
who was then in power, and who had hitherto isS' 
been a moderate *' Protectionist," turned right 
round, and in 1846 abolished the Corn Laws 
altogether. He was too late to save Ireland 
from famine, which came in all its horrors in 
1847, and, by death or emigration to America, 
reduced the Irish people by more than a third 
of their numbers. But he believed that he 
had saved any portion of our islands from the 
chance of such a disaster for the future. 



286 GEORGE III TO GEORGE V 

Decay of For a long time after the abolition of the 
'^^ture" Corn Laws it still paid the farmers to grow 
corn in Britain. But as the empty lands of 
America and Canada came to be more and 
more peopled and cultivated, and when the 
introduction of steamships brought down the 
cost and shortened the time needed to bring 
corn across the Atlantic, it began to pay them 
less and less. And now we buy not only 
almost all our corn, but most of our meat, and 
a good deal of our wool, fruit and butter, from 
abroad also. The sad result has been that 
the land of England is rapidly going out of 
cultivation, and that our villages are being 
deserted in favour of our towns, where we 
cannot expect so strong and healthy a race 
to grow up as that of our grandfathers who 
lived by work in the open fields. 

Imported There is, moreover, a most serious danger 
behind. If England should ever be defeated 
in a great war at sea, it would be impossible 
for us to get our food at all, and our population 
would simply starve. Therefore, at whatever 
cost to ourselves, it is our duty to keep our 
'Navy so strong that it must be forever im- 
possible for us to be defeated at sea. 



IMPORTED FOOD 287 

Big Steamers. 

"Oh, where are you going to, all you Big 
Steamers, 
With England's own coal, up and down the 
salt seas?" 
"We are going to fetch you your bread and 
your butter, 
Your beef, pork, and mutton, eggs, apples, 
and cheese." 

"And where will you fetch it from, all you 
Big Steamers, 
And where shall I write you when you are 
away?" 
"We fetch it from Melbourne, Quebec, and 
Vancouver, 
Address us at Hobart, Hong-kong, and 
Bombay." 

"But if anything happened to all you Big 
Steamers, 
And suppose you were wrecked up and down 
the salt sea?" 
"Why, you'd have no coffee or bacon for 
breakfast. 
And you'd have no muffins or toast for your 
tea." 

"Then I'll pray for fine weather for all you 

Big Steamers, 

For little blue billows and breezes so soft." 

"Oh, billows and breezes don't bother Big 

Steamers, 

For we're iron below and steel-rigging aloft." 



288 GEORGE III TO GEORGE V 

"Then I'll build a new lighthouse for all you 
Big Steamers. 
With plenty wise pilots to pilot you through," 
"Oh the Channel's as bright as a ball room 
already. 
And pilots are thicker than pilchards at 
Looe.'* 

"Then what can I do for you, all you Big 
Steamers, 
Oh, what can I do foryour comfort and good?" 
"Send out your big warships to watch your 
big waters, 
That no one may stop us from bringing you 
food. 

"For the bread that you eat and the biscuit you 
nibble. 
The sweets that you suck and the joints that 
you carve. 
They are brought to you daily by all us Big 
Steamers, 
And if any one hinders our coming you'll 
starve!" 

trad? ^^^ principle of "free trade" has been car- 
ried into all departments of life. When Sir 
Robert Peel took office in 1841 there were 
over twelve hundred articles on which duty 
had to be paid when they were imported from 
abroad. There are now only sixteen such 
articles, and the only ones of any importance 
are wine, spirits and tobacco (all of which are 



FREE TRADE 289 

"luxuries," as opposed to "necessaries" of 
life). When this policy was first adopted it 
was expected that all other nations would soon 
adopt "free trade" also, but they have not 
done so; and we have even allowed our own 
colonies to put on customs duties against 
the importation of British goods to their ports. 
Proposals are now on foot, and are maintained 
by a large party in Britain, to go back upon 
this principle of "free trade," and to impose 
a moderate "tariff" on the importation of 
goods from all nations which will not admit 
British goods to their ports without a duty. 
It is not my business to express an opinion as 
to whether this would be wise or not. No 
doubt "free trade all round" would be the 
most splendid thing in the world for all nations 
if all would agree to carry it out. 

The next point to which I must direct your ^/°T[^^ 
attention is the growth of the British Empire. Empire. 
Soon after Victoria became Queen a cry for 
"self-government" began to be heard from 
the colonies. There were five and forty 
British colonies all told, and the joke went 
round that they were governed by three and 
twenty clerks of the "Colonial Office" in 
Downing Street, London. This was not quite 
true, as most of our colonies had little councils 
of their own, which in some cases were even 



290 GEORGE III TO GEORGE V 

Cry of elected. It was in Canada that the cry for 

coloiiics 

for self- a more free system first arose. Many of the 
^meS; inhabitants of its two provinces were of old 
^^1839! French descent, and spoke, as they still speak, 
French. There were mutterings of rebellion 
out there, and threats that the Canadians 
would join the United States of America. 
In order to prevent this and to satisfy the Cana- 
dians, the experiment was tried in 1840 of 
giving them the beginnings of a regular Par- 
liament like our own, with a ministry respon- 
sible to that Parliament and named by a 
Governor representing the Crown. 
Exten- The gradual extension of the Dominion of 

sion of *^ •111 ••! 

Canada, Canada to include the territories known as 
i9io' Ontario and British Columbia right up to the 
Island of Vancouver was the work of the 
middle period of Victoria's reign; and during 
the same period the United States of America 
were extending westward and ever more 
westward till they reached the Pacific Ocean. 
In "British North America," Newfoundland 
now alone remains a colony separated from 
the "Dominion of Canada" and with a Par- 
liament of its own. 
The Xhe first of the Australian colonies in point 

Austra- 



lian of time was New South Wales, to which, as 
n87- I told you, our criminals continued to be sent 
^^^^- from 1788 till 1840; West AustraHa dates from 



AUSTRALIAN FEDERATION 291 

1829, South Australia and Victoria from 1836, 
and Queensland from 1850. These all soon 
began to cry out for parliamentary govern- • 
ments of their own; and in 1850 a Whig min- 
istry began to give it to them freely. Quite The 
in our own days an Act of the British Par- ^^^^^^' 
liament has made all the Australian colonies Fede- 
into a single "Federation" of States, with a 
"federal" or united Parliament for the whole 
continent. New Zealand, which was first 
recognized as a colony in 1840, has got her 
own Parliament and is not included in this 
Federation. The great wealth of both New 
Zealand and Australia consists in their vast 
flocks of sheep; these colonies are to the 
British manufacturers of woollen goods what 
England was to the Flemish weavers in the 
fourteenth century, namely, the source of the 
"raw material" of their industry. There are 
also great gold mines in Australia. 

Next in order of importance of our colonies |jH^^ 
comes South Africa with its wonderful climate, isoe- 
its great importance to us, when we took it 
from the Dutch in the Great War, was as a 
station on the road to India; but, since the 
opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, we have 
now got a shorter road thither. 

In Canada we had really little difficulty in 
making good friends with our new French 



292 GEORGE III TO GEORGE V 

subjects, for they hated and feared the push- 
ing Americans, whose territory lay to the 
south, and they knew that we would defend 
them against these men. In Australia we had 
nothing but a few miserable blacks, who could 
hardly use even bows and arrows in fight. In 
New Zealand we had a more warlike branch of 
the same race, called the Maoris, to deal with. 
But in South Africa we had not only really 
fierce savages like Zulus and Kaffirs, but also 
a large population of Dutch farmers and 
traders, who had been settled there since the 
middle of the seventeenth century. 
The These were called the "Boers"; they thor- 
Boe?s. oughly disliked our rule, and they were con- 
tinually retiring further and further from 
Cape Town into the interior of the Continent. 
They treated the native Kaffirs very badly, 
and objected when we tried to protect these 
against them. Besides "Cape Colony" (at 
the Cape of Good Hope itself), there were 
Dutch or half-Dutch States at Natal, on the 
Orange River, and beyond the Vaal River. 
One by one, in the reign of Victoria, each of 
these was annexed by Great Britain, and the 
last years of our great Queen were made sorrow- 
ful by the war which we had to fight against 
these brave, dogged and cunning Dutch 
farmers of the Transvaal. This war, though 



SOUTH AFRICAN FEDERATION 293 

against a mere handful of men, strained the 
resources of Great Britain to the utmost; it 
showed us how very badly equipped we were 
for war upon any serious scale; but it also led 
to a great outburst of patriotism all over the 
Empire, and our other colonies sent hundreds The 
of their best young men to help us. In the African 
end we won, and peace was signed in 1902; a tion^™ 
"Federation" of all the South African colonies 
with a central Parliament at Cape Town has 
recently been concluded, and the hatred be- 
tween British and Dutch is now almost a thing 
of the past. South Africa owes its recent pros- 
perity more to the discovery of great gold 
and diamond mines than to agriculture; but 
almost anything can be grown there. 

The vast territory of Rhodesia, in the centre Oj^^^r 

T»'«i African 

of the dark continent of Africa, and the British colonies. 
"Protectorates" of Uganda, British East 
Africa, and British Central Africa further to 
the north, are still, as yet, more or less unde- 
veloped; but great things may be expected of 
all of them, both as agricultural, commercial 
and mining colonies. The natives everywhere 
welcome the mercy and justice of our rule, 
and they are no longer liable, as they were 
before we came, to be carried off as slaves by 
Arab slave dealers. 

The West 

There are other countries, like Ceylon, the indies, etc. 



294 GEORGE III TO GEORGE V 

West Indies, the several stations on the north- 
west African coast, Singapore on the Straits 
of Malacca, Guiana on the north coast of 
South America, and islands too numerous to 
mention, both in the Pacific and Atlantic 
Oceans, which belong to Great Britain. But 
most of these are called "Crown Colonies" and 
do not enjoy any form of Parliamentary govern- 
ment nor need it. The prosperity of the West 
Indies, once our richest possession, has very 
largely declined since slavery was abolished in 
1833. The population is mainly black, de- 
scended from slaves imported in previous 
centuries, or of mixed black and white race; 
lazy, vicious and incapable of any serious 
improvement, or of work except under com- 
pulsion. In such a climate a few bananas will 
sustain the life of a negro quite sufficiently; 
why should he work to get more than this? 
He is quite happy and quite useless, and spends 
any extra wages which he may earn upon 
finery. 
Future What the future of our self-governing and 
Empire, really great colonies may be it is hard to say. 
Perhaps the best thing that could happen would 
be a "Federation" of the whole British Empire, 
with a central Parliament in which all the 
colonies should get representatives, with per- 
fect free trade between the whole, and with an 



THE INDIAN EMPIRE 295 

imperial army and navy to which all should 
contribute payments. But where and when 
shall we find the statesman great and bold 
enough to propose it? 

Our Indian Empire must be treated to a ^ 
few lines by itself. It is not a colony but a Indian 
"Dependency of the Crown." The extension ^^"^' 
of our rule over the whole Indian peninsula 
was made possible, first by the exclusion of 
any other European Power (when we had 
once beaten off the French there), and secondly 
by the fact that the weaker states and princes 
continually called in our help against the stronger. 
From our three starting-points of Calcutta, 
Madras and Bombay, we have gradually 
swallowed the whole country; though some 
states keep their native princes, these are all 
sworn subjects of King George as "Emperor 
of India," just as in feudal times a great feudal 
Earl was a sworn subject of his Xing. Our rule 
has been infinitely to the good of all the three 
hundred millions of the different races who 
inhabit that richly peopled land. 

Until 1858 the old "East India Company," '^^f^^^^^ 
founded at the end of Elizabeth's reign, was 
the nominal sovereign. Its early conquests 
had been made over the unwarlike races of 
Bengal and of the South; next, in the reign 
of George III, over the gallant robbers who 



296 GEORGE III TO GEORGE V 

swarmed over the central plains and were 
called Mahrattas. Early in Victoria's time 
we had to meet those magnificent fighters the 
Sikhs of the Punjaub, and the fierce Afghans 
of the north-western mountains. Both gave 
us from time to time terrible lessons; but 
British patience and courage triumphed over 
all. As we conquered them, so we enrolled in 
our Indian army all the best fighting men of 
these various races; of that army the Sikhs 
are now the backbone; but the Afghans have 
still to be kept at bay beyond the northern 
mountains. They are the "tigers from the 
North"; and, if our rule were for a moment 
taken away, they would * sweep down and 
slay and enslave all the defenceless dwellers on 
the plains. 
The In 1857 our carelessness and mismanagement 
Mutiny, of this vast Empire, together with the religious 
fear inspired among the Indians by the intro- 
duction of European inventions such as steam 
and railways, brought about the most serious 
danger that ever threatened British India, a 
mutiny in our Indian army. The instigator 
of the revolt was a man who claimed to be the 
representative of the old Mahratta rulers; the 
rebels took Delhi, the oldest capital city of 
India, and set up a shadow of an Emperor. 
They perpetrated terrible cruelties upon defence- 



1857. 



EGYPT 297 

less Englishwomen and children. But Southern 
India remained perfectly loyal and quiet; so 
did several of the old native princes; while 
the gallant Sikhs and the Ghoorkas of Nepaul 
came to our help in crowds. British troops 
were poured in as fast as possible, though in 
those days that was not very fast. The siege 
of Delhi and the relief of Lucknow were the 
greatest feats that were performed; and the 
names of John Lawrence, John Nicholson, 
Colin Campbell and Henry Havelock became 
forever immortal. When the mutiny was 
finally put down in 1858 the Crown took over 
the sovereignty from the East India Company, 
which ceased to exist; and, twenty years later. 
Queen Victoria was proclaimed "Empress 
of India." 

Another "Eastern" state, much nearer Egypt, 
home, came to us in 1882, Egypt. It was JgiJ' 
sorely against the will of our statesmen that it 
came. Egypt had, till 1840, been a province 
of the Turkish Empire, and had since that 
date been most shockingly misgoverned by a 
series of Mahommedan rulers, called Khedives. 
When, in 1869, the canal was cut by French 
engineers through the Isthmus of Suez, which 
separates the Red Sea from the Mediterranean, 
and when a new route to India for the largest 
vessels was thus opened, it became of the first 



298 GEORGE III TO GEORGE V 

importance to us to keep this route safe and 
open. France at first shared with us the 
"Protectorate" of Egypt which was then 
rendered necessary; but, when an insurrection 
of natives broke out in 1882, the task of sup- 
pressing it fell to us alone, and, when it was 
over, the sole Protectorate of Egypt became 
ours also. These were comparatively easy 
tasks, for the native Egyptian was not a good 
fighting man; but, as in India there is always 
a "tiger from the North" to be feared, so in 
Egypt there was always a "lion from the 
South." By this "lion" I mean the fierce 
tribes of the desert which is called the "Sou- 
dan," and of the Upper Nile Valley; they are 
Mohammedans by faith and of mixed Arab 
and negro race. These wild men were always 
ready to spring upon the fertile valley of 
the Lower Nile. Our Ministers at home 
too often turned a blind eye to these dangers, 
and their blindness cost us the life of the 
gallant general, Charles Gordon. It was 
not till 1898 that these "Soudanese" were 
finally subdued; and the Soudan is now 
governed by us as a dependency of Egypt. 
The justice and mercy which these countries 
had not known since the fall of the Roman 
Empire is now in full measure given to them 
by the British. 



TRADE RIVALRY 299 

This great expansion of the British Empire Jealousy 
during the last ninety-five years has not come European 
about without a great deal of jealousy from 
the other European powers; and this jealousy 
was never more real or more dangerous than it 
is to-day. But the one European war which 
we have fought since 1815 had nothing to do 
with the expansion of our Empire. 

The other nations have realized that this '^-•^^^ 

rivalry. 

Empire was founded on trade, that it has to 
be maintained by a navy, and that it has 
resulted in good government of the races sub- 
ject to us. So, though they have envied us 
and given us ugly names, they have, on the 
whole, paid us the compliment by trying to 
copy us, to build up their navies, to increase 
their manufactures, to plant colonies and to gov- 
ern subject races well. Some people think that 
they have not succeeded in this last object so 
well as ourselves. But all European nations 
are now keenly interested in trade rivalry; 
whether this will end peaceably or not re- 
mains still to be seen. 

All civilized nations, except ourselves and ^^^d^e-*^ 
the Americans, have also set themselves to ^f^^^ ^^ 

the 

arm and drill all their citizens, so as to fit them- Empire, 
selves for war on a gigantic scale at any moment. 
If ever a great war breaks out in Europe, the 
nation that is most ready with its fleet and its 



300 GEORGE III TO GEORGE V 

army will win; in the greatest war of the nine- 
teenth century (that of 1870 between France 
and Germany) it needed only a telegram of 
two words to put the German army in motion 
in a few hours. On the other hand, all the 
great mechanical inventions of recent years, 
railways, telegraphs, enormous guns, iron 
ships, airships, have made war, not only much 
more terrible, but infinitely more expensive; 
and, so, each nation will naturally shrink from 
being the first to start a war, for defeat will 
spell absolute and irretrievable ruin. But I 
don't think there can be any doubt that the 
only safe thing for all of us who love our country 
is to learn soldiering at once, and to be pre- 
pared to fight at any moment. 
The The one European war which we fought in 
War, the nineteenth century was the "Crimean 
1854-6. -y^ap »» England and France fought Russia, 
on behalf of Turkey, in 1854-6. The Turkish 
State was believed to be crumbling, and 
certainly the Turks were real barbarians, who 
governed their provinces very badly; and, 
being Mohammedans, they denied all justice 
to their Christian subjects. Russia claimed 
to protect these subjects, but every one knew 
that she only did this in order to swallow as 
much of the Turkish Empire as she could. 
All other powers dreaded Russia, a half bar- 



THE CRIMEAN WAR 301 

barous state of vast size, and full of very brave, 
if very stupid, soldiers. Some people think 
that the cunning Frenchmen led England by 
the nose into this war, and that it was no busi- 
ness of ours. It was fought in the peninsula 
of the Crimea, on the northern coast of the 
Black Sea. There were some terrible battles, 
those of the Alma, of Balaclava, of Inker- 
mann, in the autumn of 1854; then the war 
settled into a long siege of Sebastopol, during 
an awful winter, in which the sufferings of our 
army in the trenches before the city were ter- 
rible. In the end Russia had to own herself 
beaten, and Turkey, whom people called the 
"Sick Man of Europe," was propped up again. 
Though many of his other provinces have 
revolted from him, he is still alive, and now 
even in a fair way to recover his health, and to 
govern more decently than before. 

One point I have left till the last. When P'^l;^^??, 

■^ in linglish 

your great-grandfathers were young, the life, 1815- 
fastest method of travelling was in a stage- ageo'fin- 
coach with four horses at ten miles an hour, ^^'^*^°°^- 
or in a private (and very expensive) post-chaise 
which might perhaps do twelve miles an hour. 
When they wanted to light their candles (and 
they had nothing else to light) they had to 
strike a spark with a bit of steel on a bit of 
flint. The navy was built of oak instead of 



302 GEORGE III TO GEORGE V 

steel, and moved by sails instead of steam. 
Letters cost two pence apiece for the small- 
est weight and the smallest distance; a sin- 
gle sheet letter from London to Edinburgh 
cost Is. Id. 

Look round you and see in what a different 
England you now live. Gas was first used 
in the streets of London in 1812; but gas 
already is going, and electric light is taking its 
place. The first railway was opened in 1829 
between Liverpool and Manchester; already 
people are wondering when the first service of 
passenger airships will begin to cut out rail- 
ways for long journeys, as electric tramways 
and motor cars have begun to cut out horses 
and railways alike for short ones. The first 
steamship began to ply on the Clyde in 1812; 
it was of three horse-power and moved at five 
miles an hour; the Mauretania, of 30,000 
horse-power, now crosses the Atlantic in less 
than five days. During the Great War a 
system of wooden signals from hill top to hill 
top, worked by hand, would carry a message 
from Dover to London in about an hour; now 
the electric telegraph flashes messages round 
the world in a few minutes. By another kind 
of wire, the telephone, a man in London 
can talk to a man in Paris, and they can hear 
each other's voices and laughter. The dis- 



SECRET OF THE MACHINES 303 

CO very of chloroform in 1847 has reduced human 
suffering to a degree which we can hardly 
conceive; and the other improvements in 
medicine and surgery have saved and pro- 
longed countless useful, as well as many use- 
less, lives. 

The Secret of the Machines. 

We were taken from the ore-bed and the mine. 
We were melted in the furnace and the pit — 
We were cast and wrought and hammered 
to design, 
We were cut and filed and tooled and gauged 
to fit. 
Some water, coal, and oil is all we ask. 

And a thousandth of an inch to give us play. 
And now if you will set us to our task. 

We will serve you four and twenty hours 
a day! 

We can pull and haul and push and lift 

and drive. 
We can print and plough and weave and 

heat and light. 
We can run and jump and swim and fly 

and dive. 
We can see and hear and count and read 

and write ! 



304 GEORGE III TO GEORGE V 

Wireless Would you call a friend from half across the 

graphs. world? 

If you'll let us have his name and town 
and state. 
You shall see and hear your crackling ques- 
tion hurled 
Across the arch of heaven while you wait. 

Marine jj^s he answcrcd? Does he need you at his 

Engines. • •, t^ 

side? 
You can start this very evening if you choose, 
And take the Western Ocean in the stride 
Of thirty thousand horses and some screws! 

The boat-express is waiting your command ! 
You will find the Mauretania at the quay. 
Till her captain turns the lever 'neath 

his hand, 
And the monstrous nine-decked city goes 

to sea. 

Loco- Do you wish to make the mountains bare 

motives, "^ . 

Punips their head 

ing Tools. And lay their new-cut forests at your feet? 
Do you want to turn a river in its bed. 

And plant a barren wilderness with wheat? 

Shall we pipe aloft and bring you water down 

From the never-failing cisterns of the snows. 

To work the mills and tramways in your town, 

And irrigate your orchards as it flows? 




A GLIMPSE OF THE FUTURE 



I 



SECRET OF THE MACHINES 305 

It is easy! Give us dynamite and drills! 
Watch the iron-shouldered rocks lie down 

and quake 
As the thirsty desert-level floods and fills. 
And the valley we have dammed becomes 

a lake! 

But remember, please, the Law by which ^^J-'^' 
we live. 

We are not built to comprehend a lie. 
We can neither love nor pity nor forgive. 

If you make a slip in handling us you die! 
We are greater than the Peoples or the Kings — 

Be humble, as you crawl beneath our rods ! — 
Our touch can alter all created things. 

We are everything on earth — except The 
Gods! 

Though our smoke may hide the Heavens 

from your eyes. 
It will vanish and the stars will shine again. 
Because for all our power andweight and size. 
We are nothing more than children of your 

brain! 



In the common sense of the word " happy," what is 

, ,, IT" •! t^^ lesson 

these and a thousand other inventions nave no of history? 
doubt made us happier than our great-grand- 
fathers were. Have they made us better. 



306 GEORGE III TO GEORGE V 

braver, more self-denying, more manly men and 
boys; more tender, more affectionate, more 
home-loving women and girls? It is for you 
boys and girls, who are growing up, to resolve 
that you will be all these things, and to be true 
to your resolutions. 

The Glory of the Garden. 

Our England is a garden that is full of stately 

views. 
Of borders, beds and shrubberies and lawns 

and avenues. 
With statues on the terraces and peacocks 

strutting by; 
But the Glory of the Garden lies in more than 

meets the eye. 

For where the old thick laurels grow, along the 
thin red wall. 

You'll find the tool and potting-sheds which 
are the heart of all. 

The cold-frames and the hot-houses, the dung- 
pits and the tanks. 

The rollers, carts and drain-pipes, with the 
barrows and the planks. 

And there you'll see the gardeners, the men and 

'prentice boys 
Told off to do as they are bid and do it without 

noise; 



GLORY OF THE GARDEN 307 

For, except when seeds are planted and we shout 

to scare the birds, 
The Glory of the Garden it abideth not in 

words. 

And some can pot begonias and some can bud 

a rose. 
And some are hardly fit to trust with anything 

that grows; 
But they can roll and trim the lawns and sift 

the sand and loam. 
For the Glory of the Garden occupieth all 

who come. 

Our England is a garden, and such gardens 

are not made 
By singing, "Oh, how beautiful," and sitting 

in the shade. 
While better! men than we go out and start 

their working lives 
At grubbing weeds from gravel-paths with 

broken dinner-knives. 

There's not a pair of legs so thin, there's not 

a head so thick. 
There's not a hand so weak and white, nor yet 

a heart so sick. 
But it can find some needful job that's crying 

to be done. 
For the Glory of the Garden glorifieth every one. 



308 GEORGE III TO GEORGE V 

Then seek your job with thankfulness and 

work till further orders. 
If it's only netting strawberries or killing 

slugs on borders; 
And when your back stops aching and your 

hands begin to harden, 
You will find yourself a partner in the Glory 

of the Garden. 

Oh, Adam was a gardener, and God who made 

him sees 
That half a proper gardener's work is done 

upon his knees, 
So when your work is finished, you can wash 

your hands and pray 
For the Glory of the Garden that it may not 

pass away! 
And the Glory of the Garden it shall never pass 

away! 



COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N. Y. 




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